


Get Me Some of That

by panem_et_circenses



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Cuddling, Disney Princess Bellamy Blake, Drunk Bellamy, Drunk Clarke, F/M, Fluff, Idiots in Love, Misunderstandings, Modern AU, Pregnant Clarke, Sleeptalking, Smut, Soldier Bellamy, Soul Bond, Teacher Bellamy, Unicorns, Witches, arrowverse, sappy af
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2018-05-24 15:22:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 58
Words: 58,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6157989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panem_et_circenses/pseuds/panem_et_circenses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Collection of one shots and drabbles that are almost exclusively Bellarke Modern AUs.</p>
<p>(Ch 56) Weird Talents: In which Murphy is the last to know.</p>
<p>(Ch 57) Love is Love is Love: Clarke gets into graffiti and Bellamy gets into Clarke.</p>
<p>(Ch 58) Clean-Up on Aisle 7: "Octavia’s been saying for a while now ‘you know, if you asked Bellamy to marry you next week, he’d just ask you what he should wear.’"<br/> </p>
<p>(1st chapter is a Table of Contents with short summaries of all included works.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Table of Contents

Ch 1 - Table of Contents

Ch 2- T-Shirt: Bellamy has a thing for Clarke wearing his clothes.

Ch 3 - Homecoming: Soldier!Bellamy returns from overseas.

Ch 4 - Homecoming Pt 2: Clarke moves into Bellamy's apartment the summer after he returns home - their air conditioning breaks and Clarke just can't sleep next to other people when it's that hot. (Bellamy is clearly not liking that.)

Ch 5 - Homecoming Pt 3: Bellamy's nightmares from his perspective.

Ch 6 - Don't Get Saucy With Me...: Clarke gets a call from a drunken Bellamy about a possible murder in his hallway

Ch 7 - Cuddle Me In: Clarke comes home from a terrible day and finds Bellamy asleep in her bed.

Ch 8 - Meet-Weird: Bellamy and Clarke meet for the first time under bizarre circumstances (twice).

Ch 9 - When Bellamy Met Clarke: Clarke moans like a porn star while she eats and Bellamy can't take it any more.

Ch 10 - I Draw the Line at Tofu: Pregnant!Clarke just can't take Bellamy's hovering where food is concerned.

Ch 11- Peony for Your thoughts: Clarke finds hundreds of peonies on her porch from Bellamy. Only it's not her porch? And they're not from Bellamy?

Ch 12 - Unicorns: Octavia finds a unicorn and can't wait to show Bellamy.

Ch 13 - Pi Day: Bellamy gets pied in the face for Pi Day and spends the day wallowing in his stickiness.

Ch 14 - Fortune Cookies: Clarke takes a leap of faith based on some fortune cookies.

Ch 15 - Friends with Misunderstandings: Bellamy doesn't _want_ to be friends with benefits with Clarke.

Ch 16 - Mark My Words: Clarke hates hickeys. Bellamy loves them.

Ch 17 - The Contest: The Contest is, in short, a competition to see who can resist coming the longest.

Ch 18 - Sleep Talk: Clarke talks in her sleep and Bellamy uses it to his advantage.

Ch 19 - Constellations: Bellamy wakes up one morning to Clarke painting on his face.

Ch 20 - The Tattoo: Clarke abruptly realizes she might have a thing about tattoos.

Ch 21 - The Frogs: "Care to explain why my bathroom is full of frogs?"

Ch 22 - For Science!: _”I wish you could suck dick half as well as you suck the fun out of everything!_

Ch 23 - Apology Breakfast: Bellamy wakes up and finds himself in bed with a naked, bruised Clarke Griffin. (He's never been more mortified.)

Ch 24 - In Living Color: Soul mate AU where you see in black and white until you meet your soul mate.

Ch 25 - Is Cereal Soup?: A philosophical discussion? Maybe.

Ch 26 - Pick Up Artist: Bellamy conducts an elaborate pick-up scheme that involves dumping coffee all over a girl.

Ch 27 - Bellamy 2.0: Clarke names her new pillow Bellamy 2.0 because it does everything he can - only better.

Ch 28 - Check Yes or No: Clarke presents Bellamy with a list of reasons why it's a good idea to date her.

Ch 29 - Un(WAR)ranted: Clarke and Raven start a prank war against Bellamy, Jasper and Monty - it doesn't end well.

Ch 30 - I Didn't Do It!: Octavia creates a convoluted scheme to set up Clarke and Bellamy.

Ch 31 - The Toaster (Wicken!): "How the hell did you manage to get your foot stuck in a toaster?" "Honestly, very carefully."

Ch 32 - But You Cantaloupe!: Bellamy overhears Octavia's half of a phone conversation with Lincoln and jumps to conclusions.

Ch 33 - Droolius Caesar: Clarke brings home a rescue dog and Bellamy vows to _hate_ him.

Ch 34 - About Last Night...:Clarke wakes up naked in Miller's bed and can't seem to remember the night before.

Ch 35 - Disney Princess Bellamy Blake: Octavia has insisted that Bellamy is secretly a Disney Princess for as long as he can remember, but it wasn't until now that he actually started thinking she might be right.

Ch 36 - You Jump, I Jump, Jack: Clarke and Bellamy find themselves staring down the barrel of a 30-foot cliff jump, but only one of them looks scared.

Ch 37 - Superstition: Bellamy and Clarke become inadvertently supernaturally linked.

Ch 38 - Texts From Last Night: Bellamy: I find it simply astounding that you spelled “drunken” wrong, but managed to spell pterodactyl right.

Ch 39 - Pavlov: Bellamy's been secretly conditioning Clarke. She's maybe less than happy about it when she finds out. (Also, there's baklava.)

Ch 40 - Arrowverse: The genderbent Clarke-as-Oliver and Bellamy-as-Felicity Arrowverse fic,that no one asked for, but everyone probably needs.

Ch 41 - The Mountain Man: The Mountain Man is back in play and kidnaps Bellamy to draw out Clarke. (AKA Part 2 of the Arrowverse that apparently someone actually did ask for!!)

Ch 42 - Speechless : 5 times that Clarke left Bellamy speechless and the 1 time he couldn't stop babbling.

Ch 43 - Party Tricks: Clarke accidentally discovers one of Bellamy's party tricks and, well, she never claimed to be able to back away from a challenge.

Ch 44 - Class Interrupted: Bellamy pays teacher!Clarke a visit during class and incites a little teenage insanity.

Ch 45 - The Wastelands: Dystopian AU: Miller drops Clarke at outlaw leader Bellamy's feet after finding her stealing from their med supplies. (erm, or rather, I suppose this is a _different_ dystopian AU than canon?)

Ch 46 - The Wastelands Pt 2: Connor and Bellamy drag a roughed up Murphy into Clarke's clinic and the grounders declare war.

Ch 47 - The Wastelands Pt 3: Bellamy returns from battling with the grounders.

Ch 48 - Half Dome: Bellamy and Lincoln free solo climb Half Dome before Bellamy and Clarke's wedding. (The girls are less than pleased.)

Ch 49 - A True Professional: Crack!fic: Bellamy come into Clarke's hospital with an, ahem, less than comfortable situation after Murphy slips him a couple of Viagara.

Ch 50 - That's Not My Name: The cute barista keeps getting Bellamy's name wrong when he orders. It becomes a thing.

Ch 51 - Christmas Eve Puppy Pile: It's been a tradition for years, but somehow Bellamy and Clarke are the only two who show up to this year's Christmas Even puppy pile. It's only awkward if they make it awkward, right?

Ch 52 - Wait For It: 5 times that Bellamy and Clarke touched without thinking about it and the 1 time that they realized what it might mean.

Ch 54 - Blame it on the...: 5 times Bellamy comes up with an excuse to kiss Clarke, and 1 time he doesn't need to.

Ch 55 - You're A Dork: In which Clarke doesn't know how to use her words.

Ch 56 - Weird Talents: In which Murphy is the last to know.

Ch 57 - Love is Love is Love: Clarke gets into graffiti and Bellamy gets into Clarke.

Ch 58 - Clean-Up on Aisle 7: "Octavia’s been saying for a while now ‘you know, if you asked Bellamy to marry you next week, he’d just ask you what he should wear.’"


	2. T-Shirt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loosely inspired by Thomas Rhett's "T-Shirt"

Bellamy has a thing for Clarke wearing his shirts. A serious, heart-stuttering kind of thing.

It started two years ago. She’d been over with the rest of the group to watch the Super Bowl and Murphy had accidentally tipped the bowl of guacamole over onto her chest with a particularly flailing arm motion as she scooped some onto her plate. Naturally, her first reaction was to scoop off the big, gooey mess and slap it onto Murphy’s face.

Her next reaction had been to slide into Bellamy’s room and swap out her guacamole-covered sweater for one of Bellamy’s t-shirts. When she walked back out, casual as you like, wearing the ridiculous Ninja disguise flip up t-shirt he and Miller had bought as an excuse to flash their abs to pick up girls the year before, he almost spat out the beer he’d been drinking.

It stretched tight across her chest, but otherwise just hung off her significantly smaller frame, so he can’t even claim that it really looked good on her. Objectively, it was way less attractive than the sweater Murphy had just ruined. Personally, Bellamy couldn’t get enough of it. He kept stealing glances at her for the rest of the game, dumbfounded by how hot it was to see her wearing something of _his_.

His breathing grew a little shallow as he imagined what other people – strangers - might think when they saw her in it. How they would probably assume that it came from a boyfriend. How they might think that Clarke was _Bellamy’s_. The primal thrill he got as he realized that she probably even _smelled like him now_ was not something he was particularly proud of, but it was undeniable regardless.

Later that night, after everyone had left, he couldn’t shake the image from his mind. His hand was fisted around his cock before he’d realized that he intended to do something about the semi-permanent erection he’d had since she walked out in the shirt. It was quick and dirty, his hand just shy of painfully tight – ~~the way he imagined Clarke might grip him~~. When he came, it was to the mental image of stripping her back out of the shirt, skin revealed tantalizingly slowly as she writhed in his sheets.

It’s two years after the initial incident that he _finally_ makes a move on Clarke. He’s in the middle of arguing with her about the honor (or lack thereof) of archers in ancient civilizations when he loses it – just reaches out, grabs her face and kisses her. When she doesn’t slap him afterward, he asks her out and they leave for the diner around the corner immediately. They make it less than a half hour, playing a ridiculous game of footsie under the table while they mentally undress each other, before they crack, throwing down some cash onto the table and leaving the restaurant before their meals even arrived.

That is a blur of hands, tongues and _teeth_. It’s so frenzied that they knock over a lamp in their haste to make it to the bedroom without breaking their kiss. As soon as Clarke gets her hands on Bellamy’s bare skin, he loses all control over his mouth. When he’s not sucking stinging bruises along the column of her throat, her collarbone, her breasts, he’s rambling. He’s pretty sure that he tells her about his two years’ worth of Clarke-wearing-his-clothes fantasies when she gets her mouth around him.

The next morning (after a quick round two) Clarke strolls into the kitchen wearing one of his old, mostly threadbare white t-shirts, her hair still in a wild disarray from where he’d run his fingers through it and tugged at it. The shirt is obscenely thin, close enough to see through that he can make out the dusky peaks of her nipples. He’s so distracted, mouth watering at the sight, that he accidentally burns the pancakes he’d been making for her.

With that sight in front of him, he can’t bring himself to care what kinds of embarrassing things he might have spilled last night to bring them to this moment – or the burnt pancakes.

(She never does return the Ninja shirt and makes a point to pull it out and slip it on when she wants something from Bellamy. It never fails to work.)


	3. Homecoming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soldier!Bellamy returns home after over a year of being deployed overseas.

Fifteen months. It’s the longest that Bellamy has ever been deployed overseas.

Saying goodbye was the hardest thing that Clarke had ever done. She’d been there to say goodbye to him before he shipped out the other two times, but things were different then. The first two times she was there to support Octavia, wrap her in a bear hug when Bellamy disappeared through the door, keep her company so that the house didn’t feel so lonely without her brother.

This time, though, Clarke had to say goodbye, too. She’d become close to Bellamy in the eight months he’d spent at home between tours. In that time, he’d become her best friend – the title was much to Octavia’s chagrin, although she said it was a worthy sacrifice to see Clarke and Bellamy getting along, finally. In the days leading up to his deployment, she’d experienced the stress and anxiety that she’d always watched Octavia go through. She’d make up excuses for Bellamy to come over late in the night – can’t figure out why my sink is dripping, Bell, I think I heard a noise in the living room, anything should could say to get him there. She never wanted to sleep because sleeping meant eight hours of time that she couldn’t spend with him.

On the morning that Bellamy had left, with no calm-Clarke to help Octavia with the send off, he’d gotten ready to leave two hours before he really needed to. It took almost the entire time to get both girls pried off of him for long enough to get out the door. He told them in his first letter that he considered just sneaking out, because it would probably be easier on all three of them, but he knew that they would both find him overseas and kill him themselves.

(It was about five minutes _after_ Bellamy walked out the door that Clarke realized that she might have fallen in love with him while he was home. Clarke kept her newfound feelings for Bellamy to herself, not wanting to give Octavia anything else to stress about where her brother was concerned.)

The first ten months of his tour were okay. For his part, Bellamy was good about sending emails and letters home. Mostly, they came to Octavia, but sometimes he would address a letter or an email to both of them. Twice, he sent hand-written letters just for Clarke. She kept them on her nightstand and read them almost daily, running her fingers over the ink and imagining the look on Bellamy’s face as he wrote each word. The edges of the paper were worn thin, a few ink spots smudged from tears that Clarke had let fall off her nose. They’d seen better days.

But after those first ten months, the emails stopped. Then, shortly after, the letters stopped – the last one warning that his unit was going on special assignment and he wouldn’t be able to communicate for a while. He didn’t know how long.

The days without hearing from Bellamy turned to weeks, and then quickly into months. Now, with six weeks left until Bellamy’s scheduled return date, Clarke hasn’t heard anything from him in nearly four months. She’s laying in bed on the pillow that she’d stolen from Bellamy’s bed because if she tries hard enough, she can pretend that she can still find his scent in the fabric. 

It’s the five-year anniversary of her father’s death. Usually, she spends the day with Octavia, watching terrible movies and just doing anything that’s generally distracting to keep her from getting caught up in sadness. As it is, she hasn’t been able to get a hold of Octavia all day, so it’s the first time she’s had to face this day alone. She’s just laying in bed, trying not to cry too much, drowning in memories of watching her father die.

She’s between hiccupping sobs when she hears a soft click of the door. It’s enough to make her hold her breath in pause because Octavia is the only one in the city with a key to her apartment and she’s _never_ walked into any place quietly before in her life. That leaves either someone breaking in or her _mother_. (She’s not sure which is worse.) Clarke’s head whips around her room wildly, trying to find some kind of weapon to depend herself. Her eyes have just settled on the lamp, considering, when she hears it.

“Clarke?”

Deep. Gravelly, smooth at the same time.

She’d know that voice anywhere.

_Bellamy._

Clarke scrambles to get off the bed, to find him, to see him, to _touch_ him. Her feet get tangled in the sheets an she winds up falling onto the floor in a heap, groaning out a pained “ouch.”

“Clarke?” His voice comes again, a little higher – worried.

He appears in her doorway as she’s trying to pull herself off the floor and the shock of seeing him here, in person looking so _alive_ is enough of a push to get her on her feet. She closes the distance between then in two long strides and then just throws herself into his arms, trusting that he’ll catch her. (He does.)

Clarke can’t even force herself to create words in the moment. She just clings to him, koala-style, arms and legs wrapped tightly enough around his torso to probably hurt, head buried in his neck. His arms are so tight around her that she thinks it might leave bruises on her ribs but she doesn’t even care. She’s just so overwhelmingly happy – relieved – to see him here in her room that the pinch just makes it feel all the more real.

She’s not sure how long goes by with them just hanging onto each other. It’s long enough that the muscles in her arms and legs are shaking from how tightly she’s squeezing him. When she feels calm enough to form words, she pulls her head back from his neck so that she can look at his face.

“I love you, Bell.” She breaths, uncaring of the fact that her eyes are probably red from crying, her face sallow from the day of wallowing. “I let you walk out the door last year and I didn’t tell you and I couldn’t tell you in a letter or an email because that just felt too selfish. But I can’t wait anymore and I don’t care if you’re here for the night or the week or you’re home for good, because none of that changes anything. I love you, Bellamy.”

As soon as the words are out of her mouth, he crashes forward – lips capturing Clarke’s in a biting kiss. When he breaks the kiss, he keeps his forehead pressed to Clarke, staying to close that she can’t even see him properly, eyes kind of crossing when she tries. “I love you, too.” He tells her and, though she can’t see it, she can hear the smile in his voice. “I’ve wanted to tell you every day for the last year and a half. I _will_ tell you every day for the next year and a half. I’m done, Clarke, home for good.”


	4. Homecoming Pt 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke moves into Bellamy's apartment the summer after he returns home - their air conditioning breaks and Clarke just can't sleep next to other people when it's that hot. (Bellamy is clearly not liking that.)

Clarke _knew_ they should have moved into _her_ apartment. Her apartment was in a brand new building. It had wonderful things like stainless steel appliances, good water pressure, a working elevator up to the sixth floor and consistent, reliable **air conditioning**. But no, Bellamy had guilted her into moving into _his_ apartment when her lease was up last month because _his_ apartment had six years of memories with Octavia – the hole in the wall where he’d accidentally flung the serving fork while trying to cut her ash-dry turkey one Thanksgiving, the stain on the carpet from where she’d toppled a bottle of wine on her 21st birthday.

Truth be told, all he had to do was tell her it was important to him and she caved easily. For Clarke, it was easy to compromise on something so trivial as an apartment for the man she loves.

She regrets that now, of course.

It’s the end of July in the dog days of summer, the one time of the year when Clarke thinks it should be illegal to live without air conditioning. Naturally, it’s when the shitty central air in Bellamy’s apartment breaks. (Naturally, it’s also the one week when his landlord is out of town and no, apparently it doesn’t qualify as an “emergency” – she tried to call the emergency repair line when it happened this morning.)

Clarke just can’t sleep in the heat. She’s laying in bed stark naked, skin damp with sweat. Every time she tries to shift, she has to peel her limbs from the sheets. It makes this gross squelching sound that makes her skin crawl. She lays there for hours, unable to fall asleep, fending off Bellamy’s flailing limbs. Every few minutes he shifts closer to her or throws a limb across her body. Basically, it means that every few minutes Clarke is flinging his own arm back at him or scooting around the bed to keep enough distance between their bodies that she can’t feel his heat. She loves sleeping with Bellamy, really, she does. There’s nothing she loves more than waking up in his arms, knowing that she’s loved and protected. It’s just TOO. DAMN. HOT.

Mercifully, she falls asleep out of sheer exhaustion somewhere around 3 am, after Bellamy has chased her in a full lap around the bed and she’s actually laying sideways at the end of the bed.

At 4 am, she wakes up – still sideways – with Bellamy’s head pillowed on her stomach, both of his arms wrapped around her waist and one leg pressed between her own. On any other day, she’d relish in the contact. Today? Today she winces at the sound it makes when she presses on his shoulders and his face unglues itself from her skin. 

Clarke can’t take it anymore. Needs at least a few hours of sleep before she has to go to work tomorrow. She rolls off the bed and grabs a pillow before heading for the couch, confident that Bellamy can’t follow her that far in his sleep. The couch is less comfortable than the bed, especially in the heat – the leather sticks to her skin in a way that makes it sting when she peels her limbs off to get comfortable. But it’s cooler and, most importantly tonight, Bellamy-free.

At 5:30, she wakes up again and finds Bellamy. He’s mostly on the floor, head resting lightly against her shin, snoring softly. She can’t help the groan that escapes her lips – not even from the heat, she can hardly feel what little bit must seep into her shin, no, it’s the fact that he’s _followed her into the living room._

She didn’t intend to wake him up, but when he blinks his eyes open at her, she just can’t resist asking. “What’s wrong with you?” It comes out harsher than she intended.

“I can’t sleep without you.” He says, uncharacteristically sheepish.

Clarke blinks at him. “What?”

Bellamy takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and leans his forehead back on her shin. He speaks with his eyes still closed, voice soft in the quiet of the early morning. “I – when I was overseas, I used to have dreams – nightmares. For the first two tours, it was always Octavia. Something would happen, she’d disappear, I’d never be able to get her back. Last time I left, it was more of the same except, instead of O, it was you. I still have them. It’s easy to calm down and go back to sleep when you’re there next to me, when I can feel you warm and solid under my hands. I don’t like sleeping without you. Sometimes I _can’t_ sleep without you.” Finally, he opens his eyes, watching and waiting for her reaction

“Jesus, Bell.” Clarke breaths, guilt slamming into her.

It must show on her face because the next thing he does is sit up and shake his head, saying, “Don’t do that. This is why I didn’t want to tell you.”

“Shut up, Bellamy.” Clarke groans, pulling herself to her feet – ignoring the sting that runs up the back of her body as she attempts to undo the rapid fusing of the leather to her sweaty skin. She grabs Bellamy’s hand and makes a show of pulling him off the floor, despite the fact that he’s far too big for her to move him anywhere he doesn’t want to go. “If you need something from me, you have to let me know.” She insists, eyes intent on him as she walks backward toward their bedroom.

The corner of his mouth curls up just slightly. “Okay.”

Clarke throws herself back onto their bed once they’re in the bedroom and suppresses a grin when Bellamy climbs in eagerly after her. She doesn’t protest when he wraps her in his arms. (She also probably sweats ten gallons before her alarm goes off at 7:00 and doesn’t get a wink of sleep, but that feels inconsequential compared to Bellamy’s happy sigh against her neck and the easy way that he drifts into a deep sleep once they’re back in bed together.)


	5. Homecoming Pt 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy's nightmares from his perspective. (Because Bellarke_Stories said they'd like to see it and it got my brain thinking!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: some descriptions of war including death of minor characters and indirect descriptions of the effects of PTSD

Bellamy considers himself lucky for a number of reasons. Actually, the number is four. He considers himself lucky for four reasons. He made a list one night, soon after he got home from his last tour, needing a tangible reminder that he could look at from time to time. The list is tucked into the book jacket on a worn copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, scrawled in nearly illegible chicken scratch.  
1) I’m alive.  
2) I’m home for good.  
3) Clarke loves me.  
4) I’m safe.

Bellamy had a few friends die while he was overseas. It’s inevitable, the rule rather than the exception. They’d recovered Atom’s body in a skirmish during his first tour. It was painful for Bellamy to even look at it – his skin blistered and orange from the acid, whole body shriveled slightly, eyes frozen open. None were worse than that, with the exception, perhaps of Murphy on this last tour. They were so close to their target they could taste it – one last capture and they were free to return stateside. Murphy was covered in blood when Bellamy had seen him last, three bullet wounds – one in his gut shoulder, the other two in his left thigh. He couldn’t walk. He insisted they leave him behind to finish out the mission and, well, they did. Bellamy isn’t even sure if he’s dead or alive. It still eats at him, sometimes.

Even still, he considers himself lucky to never be with a man for his last breath, to never bear the weight of someone else’s last words or last wishes. He thinks that would be a weight that would break him.

Bellamy’s tours weren’t exactly peaceful. He won’t even try to put a number to his own body count, fearful of what knowing might do to him. Mostly, he has very few regrets. In fact, he has only two. The first is Murphy. The second is the little girl.

He’d been leading a convoy out of the red zone, three recovered POWs stashed in the truck behind his. Pike’s orders had been clear: “You don’t stop for anything, Blake, not a single person will stand in your way until you get to the border of the neutral zone. Do anything you have to.”

She ran out into the middle of the road, chasing after an animal. There wasn’t room to swerve around her. He couldn’t stop. His foot was a lead weight on the gas pedal. He couldn’t pick it up even if he’d tried. _The orders were clear._

The look of fear in her eyes as the truck sped closer is burned into his mind, only slightly less clear than the dull thud of the impact.

He dreams of that moment almost nightly, the sick weight that settled into his gut when he realized the lengths he would go if he were under orders. It was a moment that made him question his sanity, his freedom. His biggest fear is that all Pike needs to do is show up on his doorstep, bark a few orders, and Bellamy will comply without thought, _brainwashed_.

Since coming home, the big brown eyes and soot-covered skin of the little girl have slowly morphed into something more familiar. Each night as he drives the truck, he finds clear blue eyes staring back at him, pale skin, golden blonde hair. Her face blanches each time, mouth opening as she cries his name, pleads for him to stop.

He never does.

The thud wakes him up each time.

The dream is always so real. It takes him a minute each time to ground himself back in reality, to remember that he’s alive, he’s home for good and Clarke loves him. It’s those frantic moments between physically waking and mentally waking that he needs her most. His hands are panicked as they reach out, searching for Clarke’s solid warmth to remind him of what’s real and what’s not.

Once she’s there with him, tucked along the length of his body so that he can’t push her out of his thoughts, it’s easier to pull himself back. The fine tremors that run up his body calm immediately. It’s half the comfort of having her close and half the desire to ensure that he doesn’t wake her with his trembling.

He busies himself stroking his hand along the curve of Clarke’s waist, relishing in the breathy sigh she gives, and how she wiggles, attempting to burrow deeper into his warmth. As he lets her closeness bring him fully back, he whispers into her hair, “I’m alive. I’m home for good. You love me. I’m safe.”


	6. Don't Get Saucy With Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy gets drunk on wine coolers and calls Clarke, convinced that there's been a murder in his apartment complex and she's the only one who can help. (Fair warning, this was written while I was mostly drunk - but not on wine coolers!)
> 
> Loosely based on real life events of PEOPLE DOING WEIRD THINGS IN MY HALLWAY?
> 
>  
> 
> Previously posted as a standalone - just condensing because I <3 organization.

“Somebody was murdered in my hallway.”

Clarke actually pulls the phone back from her head to make sure that this is Bellamy. She’d think that he was pranking her, but he does sound genuinely panicked and he’s not a great actor.

Still, all she manages to choke out is a confused, “What?”

“Somebody was murdered in my hallway.” He repeats. “Or maybe just shanked, but not dead yet. Or maybe Jesus is doing that thing again – you know, the thing with the Egyptians and the goat blood and the murdering?”

Clarke blinks, staring at her lamp like it might give her the answers to the dozens of questions forming in her head. “Passover?”

“Yeah, that one. It’s the first-borns, right? Is blood on the door a good thing or a bad thing? Am I going to die tonight, Clarke?”

Clarke brings a hand up to pinch at her brow. She already feels a dull headache forming at the base of her skull. “Bellamy, I’m going to need a little more context to help you out, here.”

“There’s blood on my door, Clarke!”

And, oh, alright, there’s the connection. Clarke supposes that might be cause for actual panic. Although, if Bellamy really thought something was wrong, she thinks he probably wouldn’t be bringing Passover into it. For as close as they’ve gotten over the years, Clarke doesn’t know for sure how Bellamy’s religious leanings go, but as a cynic she’s always assumed he was an atheist. She’s at least 95% certain she doesn’t really think that the Biblical plagues have come to haunt him.

“Don’t you think there are other people you should be calling about blood on your door. You know, like the police or something?”

Bellamy sighs, as though he’s answered this question ten times already. She can actually visualize him rolling his eyes. “You’re practically a doctor, Clarke.”

“My mother is a doctor, Bellamy, that doesn’t make me one.”

“Well you’re more of a doctor than I am.” He grumbles.

Clarke throws her free hand into the air, but does get up and start putting on her shoes. “The point remains that as much of a doctor as you might like to consider me, I’m still not a police officer. And you don’t call doctors about murders – they tend to stop being of use when the patient is already dead.” She pauses as she throws a hoodie over her head. “Wait, are you drunk?”

Bellamy giggles and, no matter what his verbal response is, that settles it for Clarke. Bellamy Blake only giggles for one reason – he’s extremely drunk, but not even just regular drunk, wine cooler drunk. He hasn’t giggled since freshman year in high school. “Maybe.” He admits.

“Great. Okay, Bell, just stay where you are. I’m going to be over in five minutes. I have my key so literally don’t even move from where you’re standing.”

“Got it.” He says and she can feel his drunken salute through the phone. How did she not realize earlier? “Oh, yeah, and I meant that, you know, if he just got shanked but he’s not dead yet – then you could do your doctor thing.”

Clarke sighs as she heads out the door. “Right, yeah, of course. I’m hanging up now. No moving, got it?”

 

When Clarke gets in front of Bellamy’s door she almost sees what he’s talking about. There is definitely something on his door and it’s red, viscous and sticky. There’s just sort of a little smear of it on his doorjamb – definitely not Passover-like quantities of maybe-blood – and there’s a bit on the column a few feet down the hall. Probably not murder either.

Clarke sticks her key in the lock and opens the door, avoiding having to touch the whatever-it-is. She finds Bellamy standing no more than two feet inside the door, facing toward his kitchen, but his head swivels toward her when she walks in. He clearly hasn’t moved since she hung up with him.

“You made it!” He says, and she notices his feet twitching and feels bad for taking advantage of his drunken habits. Bellamy drunk on wine coolers giggles (and she sees what looks like a bowling pin set up of ten empty bottles on the counter, so score one for deduction,) but Bellamy drunk on anything does one thing without fail – follow orders. Nobody knows why and they’re almost too afraid to find out.

“You can move.” She tells him and he practically leaps on her, wrapping her up into a warm hug.

“I’m so glad you didn’t get murdered, too.” He whispers as he hugs her and Clarke thinks he means it to be a compliment, so she rolls with it.

“No one got murdered in your hallway, Bell.”

He pulls back and narrows his eyes at her. “Are you sure? There were gallons of blood out there, Clarke.”

“First of all, there’s barely more than one gallon of blood in the whole human body, so that seems unlikely, second of all that’s not blood.” She tugs on Bellamy’s hand and pulls him back through the open door and into the hallway.

“Okay maybe not gallons.” Bellamy admits, grinning sheepishly.

Clarke reaches out, fairly sure about what she’s doing, and swipes her finger through the sticky substance. Despite Bellamy’s minor protestation (“Ew, gross!”) she lifts the finger to her nose and sniffs. When she’s positive, she touches it to her tongue and yeah, definitely not blood.

“It’s marinara sauce, Bellamy.”

“Marinara?!” He yells in shock. “So there wasn’t a murder?”

“I’m sure you could find some free-gan, vegan whatever crazy enough to tell you that tomatoes were murdered to make this fine sauce, but no people were harmed. Fear not, you’re safe from murderers and Passover.”

Bellamy sags with relief. “Oh, thank God. What would I do without you, Clarke?”

At the moment, she’s not entirely sure.


	7. Cuddle Me In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke comes home from the worst day to find Bellamy asleep in her bed.

It’s been a terrible day.

Clarke dropped her bag on her way to her morning class, snapping half of her brand new charcoals with the impact. She got a C on her on her latest lab report and, okay, fine, she may have been slightly distracted when she wrote it, but it was _at least_ B-work. It starts pouring when she’s walking across campus to get to her afternoon studio class. She has to sit in her stool, shivering in her wet clothes for three hours, drawing stupid looking pots.

Terrible might not be a strong enough word.

The elevator in the lobby of her apartment building takes _forever_ \- so long that Clarke gives up, assuming it must be broken. She stomps up all four flights of stairs to her floor and then continues stomping across the landing. The walls vibrate slightly with the brute force she uses to slam the door shut behind her.

“O?” Clarke calls through the apartment. She needs some quality roommate time, maybe a few glasses of wine, some terrible reality TV, preferably with some chocolate involved at some point.

Unfortunately, it seems like Octavia’s not home. She’s probably out with Lincoln, having a day that’s as wonderful as Clarke’s has been awful. Clarke sighs, places her bag on the floor and shucks her still-damp sneakers.

She sulks through the empty living room, fully intending to collapse into bed – uncaring of her still-damp hair – and sleep until her responsibilities catch up to her again. Only, when she strides through the open doorway to her bedroom, she finds her bed already occupied. Wild brown curls poke out from underneath her quilt – _Bellamy_.

Bellamy who’s _supposed_ to be in Corfu, consulting on a new exhibit on something or other for another three days. She hasn’t seen him in over a week – hasn’t even _spoken_ to him – but if he didn’t wake up to her semi-temper-tantrum, it’s because he’s bone-deep exhausted.

Instead of waking him up, Clarke just carries on as she had intended. She shucks the rest of her damp clothes and slides under the covers, molding herself into the little space that Bellamy’s spread-eagle form leaves for her. In the end, she winds up mostly on top of him, ear pressed to his sternum where she can feel the steady beat of his heart, arm curled around his side against his bare skin.

She sighs when he shifts in his sleep to accommodate her, one arm curling around her back.

As she starts drifting to sleep, she thinks that maybe she’s had worse days after all.


	8. Meet-Weird

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy and Clarke meet for the first time under bizarre circumstances (twice).

The first time that Clarke sees Bellamy, he has a near-two-foot tower of random objects stacked on his head while he sleeps peacefully, blissfully unaware. The tower starts innocently enough – a lightweight hard-back book balanced on the side of his head. On top of that are two empty Starbucks cups – one with the bottom down on the book, one stacked upside down on top of the first. Most frightening is the bowl of cereal balanced precariously on top of the paper cups. Or, rather, it’s the fact that there’s a boy standing, casually eating Frosted Flakes out of the bowl while he watches TV.

Clarke knows she should just stroll by. She is, after all, on her way out of the frat house for a walk of _not_ shame – because she can sleep with whoever she damn well wants, thank you. But still, protocol for sneaking out of a frat house on a Saturday morning is to do just that – sneak.

But really, she can’t pass this up.

“What the fuck are you doing?” She asks the cereal-eating guy.

“Saturday morning tradition – any time Blake gets drunk enough to pass out here, I stack things on his stupid face and take pictures for his sister for blackmail material.” The guy shrugs at her and goes back to peacefully eating cereal off his friend’s face.

Clarke raises an eyebrow. She spares one last glance at the sleeping guy, laments the face that his face is mostly obscured by the book laying on it because from what she _can_ see, he looks pretty cute. Ultimately, she just shakes her head and walks out the door because who is she to argue with fray guy logic?

______________________________________________________________

The first time that Bellamy sees Clarke, she’s got black paint coating her hair, dripping down her face – she looks like she’s been dipped in oil face first.

He’s in the middle of a great episode of Mythbusters when the apartment door bursts open. Octavia calls in, “Out of our way, Bell, we’ve got hair to save!”

And then she darts across his line of vision, tugging this girl he’d never seen before who’s half undressing herself as she runs through his living room, trying to use her shirt as a shield to prevent herself from dripping paint on their carpet. And, well, it’s weird, but he’s grateful she’s at least saving the carpet.

Later, he learns that Clarke was a victim of Octavia’s unflappable lack of hand-eye coordination. She and Clarke were the only ones in the open paint studio, Octavia attempting to create some sort of Jackson Pollock-like painting to impress some new guy she’s seeing. She’d had a big bucket of black paint in one had, a brush in the other, dipping the brush and flicking paint across the canvas. Except, then she accidentally flung the wrong hand while Clarke was sneaking behind her for a new brush and voila – new hairdo for Clarke.

______________________________________________________________

After the Paint Incident, Clarke starts seeing a lot more of Octavia and, as a byproduct, her brother Bellamy. She grows rather fond of both Blake siblings very quickly. It takes a full three months for her to make the connection.

She lets herself into the Blake’s apartment with the hidden key early one Sunday with the intention of dragging Octavia out for a girls’ day. The last thing she’s expecting is to find Bellamy asleep on the couch – where they often find him after a long night of grading papers – with two books, a tissue box and a Pringles can balanced on his forehead while he snores. At the top of the stack is a plate with scrambled eggs, which Octavia eats while standing, eyes focused on the TV in front of her.

The sights are so similar that the memory kind of slaps Clarke in the face. She immediately bursts out laughing, which causes Bellamy to start, which topples the tower, which leaves the plate to fall flat onto his face and though the plate is plastic and relatively light-weight, the eggs are hot and must burn his forehead when they fall. He jumps up, swearing like a sailor, flinging eggs across the room with both hands as he frantically scrapes them off of his face.

“God fucking damn it, O, how many times do I have to tell you to stop putting shit on my face while I sleep?!”

(Later, Clarke will admit that it’s the moment she fell for him.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm officially challenging myself to update this fic daily between now and my spring break.


	9. When Bellamy Met Clarke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke moans like a porn star while she eat and Bellamy can't take it any more.

The fall after she graduates college, Octavia takes a cooking class. She’s job-hunting and terribly bored. She saw the ad for the local community center class and couldn’t pass up the $15 class fee for eight whole weeks of cooking instruction.

It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to Bellamy.

It’s not that he’s now forced to eat Octavia’s horrible cooking more often. On the contrary, the class does as advertised and turns her into a fantastic chef. Everything she makes is delicious.

It not that she came home after the second class and announced to Bellamy that she was going to marry the instructor. It’s not even that the instructor is six years older than her and covered in tattoos and could easily take Bellamy in a fight. (He still doesn’t hate it when she comes home after the third week and announces that she’ll be leaving for the night because _Lincoln_ is waiting outside and, yeah, Bell, don’t wait up.)

No. It’s the fact that every Sunday evening, Clarke comes over for dinner. Octavia cooks, Bellamy cleans and Clarke… _moans_.

The first week, Octavia makes Chicken Parmesan. Clarke stares at Bellamy with terror in her eyes as she brings the first bite to her mouth. (Prior to cooking class, O plus kitchen usually meant fire.) As she tentatively chews, her eyes grow soft until she starts nodding vigorously with approval. 

“Oh my God, O, this is really good!” She says, angling for a second bite. And then she piles the cheese high on top of her fork and places the next piece of chicken on her tongue. She leans back from the table, a decadent groan vibrating through her throat as her eyes slip shut. It continues like that as she chews until she slaps her hand onto the table, moaning a deep, “Oh God” with her head thrown back after she’s swallowed.

And, well, sure Bellamy takes notice of it. How could he ignore Clarke Griffin practically having an orgasm across the table from him? His hands grip the edge of the table a little tighter and he grits his teeth to make it to the end of her _performance_ without snapping at her.

The next week, the dish is Fettuccine al Pomodoro, but Clarke reacts in much the same way. It’s one bite before she’s giving a full on When Harry Met Sally performance at the dinner table, only this time with the added benefit of sucking strips of pasta into her mouth.

And then it’s Arancini and the week after that it’s Keftedakia and Bellamy can’t take it after the Keftedakia.

Clarke makes all these puns about _balls_ while she’s moaning like a porn star. He’s three quarters of the way through the dishes when he starts thinking that maybe she’s doing it on purpose.

“On my way to meet Lincoln, try not to kill each other!” Octavia calls as he’s drying the last plate.

And knowing that he’s alone here with Clarke, Bellamy kind of loses it. It’s been a long-time coming anyway, if he’s honest with himself. He slams the damp dishtowel down onto the counter and stalks into the living room. Clarke’s sitting on the couch with her legs crossed and her head held high, the very picture of innocence, if not for the grin on her face like the cat that got the cream.

Bellamy stomps over to her and, with no preamble, hauls her off the couch and over his shoulder so that he can carry her back into his bedroom. When he drops her unceremoniously on the bed, she grins up at him and says, “Took you long enough.”

“Stupid fucking tease.” Bellamy growls.

He’s glad for the fact that she’s just wearing yoga pants, because if he had to deal with buttons or snaps or zippers, he’d probably break them. He finds her wet when he finally gets her naked, like she’s been waiting just for this since the goddamn Keftedakia. (She has, obviously.)

Clarke is ridiculously easy to please once he gets his head between her legs – nails digging sharply into the back of his neck when he gets the pressure of his tongue just right. She’s coming on his tongue in a matter of just two or three minutes, but it’s nothing like what Bellamy might’ve been expecting. She’s _quiet_ , just letting out this long string of near-silent, breathy moans, a tiny whine rising in her throat.

Bellamy takes personal offense because even the Arancini made her louder than that and the Arancini was, honestly, not that great. “I swear to God, Clarke, I’m not moving until you scream for me.” He tells her like it’s some kind of threat, a punishment. As an after thought, he grumbles, “I won’t be bested by Octavia’s cooking.”

Clarke comes three more times before Bellamy finally lets up. She still doesn’t scream, because contrary to her Oscar-worthy dinner table performances, she’s always been quiet in bed. It’s just that Clarke’s worried that Bellamy is going to have permanent jaw damage if he doesn’t quit it, so she bribes him from between her legs with the promise of showing him her newfound lack of a gag reflex.


	10. I Draw the Line at Tofu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pregnant!Clarke just can't take Bellamy's hovering where food is concerned.

They say that you either _love_ being pregnant or you _hate_ being pregnant. There is no in between.

Clarke _loves_ being pregnant.

She loves feeling those first tiny flutters of her baby kicking. She loves knowing that she’s creating life in her belly. Loves that she gets to give Bellamy his lifelong dream. She loves the way her hair is thicker, the way it falls nicer against her shoulders. She likes the glow in her skin. She loves being able to cut in line for the bathroom in public places and not have people yell at her. She loves getting to eat marshmallow fluff with popcorn and not get judged – never mind that it’s been one of her favorite snacks since she was ten.

Clarke loves watching Bellamy loving her being pregnant.

She loves the way that his eyes are constantly dragging to her growing baby bump. Loves the way that he place soft kisses against the rounded curve of her stomach when he says hello or goodbye. She likes listening to the stories that he tells the baby.

Theoretically, Clarke could be pregnant non-stop for the next five years and love every minute of it.

Except the food.

Bellamy frets over all aspects of Clarke’s pregnancy, but none so much as her nutrition. One morning, he took her bowl of Cocoa Pebbles out of her hand just as it was getting to the perfect level of almost-soggy. He’s been slowly swapping out some of her favorite foods with “alternatives” hoping that she won’t notice. (She does, but she hasn’t cracked and yelled at him yet.)

He piles quinoa under her salmon like she won’t notice it’s not rice. He keeps throwing ground up flaxseed on everything she eats like it’s magic. Flaxseed does _not_ go well with peanut butter sandwiches. And the cottage cheese! Cottage cheese is not an acceptable swap for yogurt.

She takes it in stride, tells herself that he’s just doing it for the baby. It’s all with good intentions and he’s right about all of it – of course he is, because he spends all of his free time researching baby-related things.

When he throws a big floppy piece of probably undercooked tofu on her plate one night, she loses it.

“God dammit, Bellamy. I can’t take it anymore!”

He drops the slab of tofu he’d been about to put on his own plate – it falls to onto the table with a bit of a _plop!_ His eyes are wide, darting around her face and falling to her stomach. He’s in a panic, clearly, and Clarke’s not entirely sure what’s going through his mind but she’s certain it’s more intense than tofu-hatred.

She reaches out and cradles his jaw with one hand, and the contact takes some of the wildness out of his eyes immediately. “No, Bell, just – the tofu. I can’t take all this gross food. I love you. I love that you want to take care of me and I love that you want to take care of Baby, but Jesus, sometimes I just want a burger.”

“A burger.” He repeats, suddenly glaring at the tofu on her plate.

Clarke grins. “Or some spicy enchiladas?”

Bellamy’s mouth turns down, calculating. “Can I at least put spinach in it?”

“Oh, God.” Clarke groans. It’s on the tip of her tongue to turn him down outright, but his eyes are just so pleading. “Maybe a side salad?”


	11. Peony for Your Thoughts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke finds hundreds of peonies on her porch from Bellamy. Only it's not her porch? And they're not from Bellamy? (100% crack)

Clarke is dead on her feet as she shuffles up the walk to her front door. She was unexpectedly pulled into a double shift overnight. There was a ten car pile up on the highway that filled up every empty bed in the ER and then some. She’s been awake for over twenty-four hours, has hardly eaten – except for the banana that she’d nearly shoved in her mouth between patients twelve hours ago – and has never been so grumpy in her life.

The last thing she expects to find when she finally pries her eyes open to try to fit her key in the lock is _hundreds of peonies_ sitting on her porch. Clarke actually drops her keys in shock. There are something like twenty vases filled with light purple flowers. They’re gorgeous – breathtaking, even.

As curiosity edges out fatigue, she starts hunting for a card on one of the vases. Eventually, on the second-to-last vase, she finds a small typed card that says:

**Princess,**

**One flower for each time I’ve fallen in love with you so far. I can’t wait any longer to say it face to face.**

**-B**

It sends Clarke’s heart kicking into overdrive because, yeah, she and Bellamy have pretty much been dancing around each other since junior year of high school when Clarke showed up to prom baring enough cleavage for him to finally stop thinking of her as “little sister’s best friend” and nothing more. But they haven’t actually _done_ anything about it. Have never _said_ anything to each other or acknowledged it out loud. They’ve just been gravitating in each other’s orbit for the last ten years, as close as two people can be without the added attachment of romantic entanglement.

But, well, it’s 9 am and Clarke’s been awake since 6 am _yesterday_ and her brain isn’t exactly running on all cylinders. It feels like the right thing to do to, in the moment, to pick herself up, hope back on the bus and ride it clear across the city to the high school where Bellamy teaches, social niceties be damned. She’s been waiting _ten years_ for a confession like this. She’s not going to let third period history class stop her.

Clarke bursts through the high school doors like a madwoman. (She looks the part, too, with her hair a mess, skin sallow from the sleep deprivation. She’s even got blood on the front of the scrubs she’d neglected to change out of.) She’s been here enough times with Bellamy – setting up his classroom, coming in on the weekend to grade papers or get things set for the next week – that she finds her way to his room without needing to think.

Mercifully, when she walks through the doorway, she finds him alone in an empty room. Must be a prep period today. “Bell,” she breathes, voice sounding far off and ethereal to her own ears. “I couldn’t wait either. I love you, too.”  
And if Clarke doesn’t notice the way that Bellamy blanches, it’s probably because her eyes are closing as she leans in to kiss him. His posture softens the moment her lips meet his and he meets her clumsy kiss easily, coaxing her gently into coordination before pulling away.

“I love you, too, you big weirdo.” He tells her when he pulls back, breathless.

“Yeah, you already said that part, but it’s nice to hear it out loud. Okay, that’s enough.” She says decisively, yawn tearing from her mouth. “Now it’s definitely time to sleep. Can I just sleep in your chair while you teach?”

Bellamy laughs and she distantly feels his fingers brushing along her temples. “Clarke it’s Saturday. I’m just getting caught up on work.”

And, huh, maybe she’s more tired than she thought, but yeah, when she thinks about it – the hallways were entirely deserted when she walked up to his classroom. The entire building is blanketed in silence. “Oh.” She blinks at him, willing her eyes to stay open.

(Later, when Bellamy drives her home to get some well-deserved rest, she’ll realize that her porch is entirely peony-free. Her _neighbor’s porch_ , however – the neighbor whose boyfriend, Brandon, has spent the last four months in Taiwan on an extended business trip – is chock-full of them. In the end, she won’t have it in her to worry about her mix up, too caught up in the way that Bellamy tucks her into bed and crawls in behind her, arms banding warmth around her body as he presses his lips to her temple.)


	12. Unicorns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Octavia finds a unicorn and wants to show Bellamy.

“A unicorn.” Bellamy repeated dumbly, staring at his sister, entirely unamused.

Octavia sighs and grabs for his forearm, tugging him sharply toward the fence. “I swear! Big white stead with a big old gold horn coming out of its head!”

“A unicorn.” He says again, because he just can’t resist.

“UNICORN.” Octavio growls. “Unicorn. One horn. Singular horn. On a horse-like animal. Outside the gate. Do you want to see it or not?”

Bellamy shakes his head, everything in his posture screaming that he’s less than pleased to have a little sister right now, even if she is seventeen. “I just don’t believe you. Unicorns aren’t real, they’re fantasy. Besides, I’ve got things to do, O – I need to talk to Miller about the new guard schedule and –” Her hand clapping over his mouth cuts him off.

“Well, maybe radiation created some unicorns along with the two-headed deer. There _are_ glowing butterflies, after all. How am I supposed to know?” Octavia tugs sharply one more time, uprooting his planted feet. She uses the momentum to drag him along out through the gap in the gate.

Once she’s got him moving, he allows himself to be tugged along quite easily, though he does put up token resistance in the form of long-suffering sighs every few steps. She crouches down behind the large boulder by the stream and drags him down with her. “Look!” She whispers, pointing across the stream to a rocky clearing.

Sure enough, there stands a bright white horse with an angelically bright, golden mane sweeping down its neck. On it’s head stands, just as Octavia described, a golden horn. It is, without a doubt, a unicorn.

Bellamy stares, mouth gaping, for far too long. Finally, he blinks and shakes his head, hisses, “goddamn radiation. _Unicorns._ ”


	13. Pi Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy gets pied in the face for Pi Day and spends the day wallowing in his stickiness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because it's Pi Day and I may or may not have taken a pie to the face this morning for my own students. (Spoiler alert: I did.)

Bellamy loves his students. He really does. Bellamy also loves _teaching_.

He loves getting to share his passion for history with 100 generally bright-eyed and bushy tailed high school freshmen. They’re so interestingly in the gap between young and old. He likes hearing their thoughts and perspectives, hearing the newest lingo and what’s cool and what’s not. (Generally, everything that he likes is _not_ cool – including the word cool.)

He loves his job. Some days, he just needs to remind himself of it over and over.

Like today.

Pie day. Or rather, _pi_ day.

In an early-morning special assembly, Bellamy had found himself (read: his face) on the receiving end of a pie tin piled high with Cool Whip. His actual, honest-to-God, favorite student had taken 2nd place in the annual Pi Day competition, memorizing a whopping 215 digits of pi. Her prize? Pie-ing a teacher of her choice. Her choice? Bellamy.

So he spends the rest of the day continually trying to get all of the drying sugar out of his hair. He even ducks his head into the sink during lunch in one last mad attempt, but adding all that water just seems to make the sugar _angrier_ and then his hair gets all crunchy. It’s disgusting. Not to mention the fact that he’s got the stuff all over his favorite tie – the one with the miniature versions of each metope from the Parthenon on it.

By the time he gets home, Bellamy has resigned himself to living a long life of crunchy-hair and never being able to move his stiff eyebrows ever again. He’s also resigned himself to inevitably finding new sticky spots of dried whipped-whatever in strange places – behind his ears, in his nose, under his jaw – until the day he dies.

Clarke is on the couch when he gets home, some house-hunting show playing on the TV while she sketches. She doesn’t laugh or question him, merely tuts at him and grabs his hand, pulling him wordlessly through the apartment and into the bathroom. She spends almost ten minutes gently massaging shampoo through his hair, fingers working gently through the tangles left behind in the sticky mess until he’s good as new.

As the water runs cool, he backs Clarke against the tile and lets his hands slide along her slippery wet skin as he kisses her senseless. And yeah, Bellamy would spend all day every day covered in drying Cool Whip if it means having a moment like this each evening.


	14. Fortune Cookies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke takes a leap of faith based on some fortune cookies.

Bellamy’s first thought when Clarke kisses him is, _this must be a dream_.

He’s spent six torturous summers watching Clarke sunbathe in the sand, far too much skin bared to his eyes. He didn’t think it could get much worse than having her mostly-naked body in his sightline for eight hours a day. 

That’s when Octavia took it upon herself to become “summer BFFs” with the hot blonde. 

It was still eight hours a day of a half-naked Clarke on the beach – but at least that was at a _distance_. When he got home, it was endless hours of a smiling Clarke, sun kissed skin and salt-waves in her hair, sitting on his couch looking at him like he put the moon in the sky whenever he made paella for dinner. If they started eating paella for dinner weekly after that, well, no one complained.

After six summers of lusting after Clarke, he’s dreamt of the precise moment where she presses her lips to his no less than seven times. He’s never dreamt it like this though. He’s sitting outside in an old lawn chair, watching the stars overhead. Clarke barrels out the back door like a hellcat and literally jumps in his lap – the chair collapses the moment she puts her lips to his, just as he’s thinking he must be dreaming. (It’s kind of a perfect though, because it proves to him that this is most definitely _not_ a dream and, yes, Clarke really did just kiss him.)

They both fall to the ground, Clarke’s teeth accidentally biting down on Bellamy’s lip hard enough to break the skin in the process. “Shit!” They swear at the same time. The pain in his lip is distracting enough that he doesn’t initially notice the gravel embedded into his palm from trying to break his fall one-handed, the other hand busy clutching Clarke’s hip to make sure she didn’t topple over.

“Sorry! Sorry!” Clarke squawks, cheeks flaming red even in the dim lighting of the old lantern he brought out back. She reaches out starts fussing with his bottom lip, apparently trying to inspect the damage.

“What was that, Clarke?” His voice is slightly muffled, a little distorted since Clarke still has his bottom lip pinched between her fingers. He’s not _mad_ , on the contrary, it might have been the best kiss he’s ever experienced – subsequent disaster included – he just wants to know where it came from.

Her arms flail a little as she yells, “It was the fortune cookies! I was just doing what the fortune cookies said! It’s not my fault.”

“Fortune cookies.” Bellamy repeats, voice going low. That’s not exactly what he was hoping to hear. “You kissed me because fortune cookies told you to.”

“Yes!” Clarke leans back, scooting off Bellamy’s lap in the process, a relieved sigh coming from her lips. “Wait, no!”

“You didn’t kiss me because fortune cookies told you to?” Bellamy raises a brow at her, taking advantage of the slight distance to stand up and brush his hands off on his board shorts. If this is going as south as he thinks it might – if this is some weird Chinese-food-centric game of truth or dare that she and O are playing or something – he wants to be able to make a hasty exit.

“No, I –“ Clarke slaps a hand onto her own thigh, frustrated. “Stop grumping at me, damn it! Just wait there.”

She disappears back inside then, leaving Bellamy standing in the pebbled back yard, ass starting to throb while he licks blood off his lip from her kiss. Clarke’s back in less than a minute, two tiny pieces of paper clenched tight into her fist.

“Here.” She shoves them at his chest, pouting all the way.

Bellamy gingerly takes the slips and flattens then into his open palm:  
 _You will get what your heart desires._  
and  
 _Take a leap of faith._

Bellamy laughs, can’t help it. “I don’t think the fortune cookie was telling you to literally _leap_ at me.”

Clarke huffs at him, snatching for the crumpled papers, only for Bellamy to pull his hand back at the last moment. “Yeah, well, I was too busy having faith in _you_ that I forgot to worry about your shitty chair.” It’s petulant, pretty bad as far as admissions of feelings go, but it’s _there_. The bright smile on his face pulls at the cut in his lip, but he doesn’t care.

Bellamy reaches a hand out, curls it under Clarke’s chin to tilt her head up to him. “Give me some warning next time and I’ll be sure to catch you.” Their second kiss is not better than the first, per se, but it does involve less injuries.

Two years later, he does finally return Clarke’s fortunes, but it’s on the condition that she takes the ring, too. She does.


	15. Friends with Misunderstandings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy doesn't _want_ to be friends with benefits with Clarke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today was definitely a close one, but the streak lives on! Now I'm curious to see how long I can keep this up...  
> I'm thinking 50 chapters in 50 days?

Bellamy hadn’t _meant_ to get tangled into a whole “friends with benefits” mess with Clarke. He’d _meant_ to confess the feelings he’d been harboring for going on six months, ask her out, maybe kiss her a little. He’d wanted a girlfriend, not a booty call.

But naturally, the night Bellamy managed to work up the courage to confess his feelings to Clarke happened to coincide with a day wherein she’d had a major blowout with her mom. He didn’t know that at the time, though. She’d come over that evening for pizza and a movie – a standing Thursday tradition – and sat on the couch on the couch with him, feet in his lap while they both half-watched the slapstick playing on the screen.

He’d shyly rubbed his thumb along her ankle as he poured his heart out to her, eyes fixed on her toes flexing and relaxing against his forearm. When he looked up, she leaned in and grabbed his face, kissing him fiercely. Rightly so, Bellamy argues, he took that as a green light, a surefire indication that she returned his feelings. They were going to ride off into the sunset or whatever.

So the next morning had been confusing to say the least. Clarke shimmied out of bed before six am, sliding into her clothes from the night before. When Bellamy had rolled over and grabbed for her hand, she shook him off with a loud tsk. “Thanks for last night, Bell. God knows I needed to relax. I have to get to work, but let me know if you need me to return the favor sometime.” And then she’d disappeared through his bedroom door without so much as a wave.

Bellamy is dumbstruck. He stares at his empty bedroom doorway, jaw hanging open for probably close to ten minutes. In the end, he decides it’s probably just best to pretend that night never happened. (The alternative is finding out what the fuck actually _did_ happen, and he’s not sure he wants to know.)

He does his best to put the sex out of his mind. Really, he does. He’s content with Clarke, his best friend. Thinking of Clarke as she rode him, skin slick with a sheen of sweat, hair wild in her eyes as her body undulated above him…

It’s just bad news.

Three weeks later, she texts him at 11 pm on a Saturday. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, so he’s not prepared when he reads it.

_Clarke 11:04: At least let me blow you or something, Bell, I’m starting to feel guilty._

And he can’t exactly so _no_ to a request like that. So she shows up at his door ten minutes later and drops to her knees the second the lock clicks into place. She draws it out, spends close to half an hour doing her best to suck his brains out through his dick. (Damn near succeeds, too, if the way he forgets how to form words after is anything to go by.) 

It’s that night that he decides that, if he can’t have Clarke the way he wants her, maybe this is second-best. And so they find themselves in a routine. Nothing really changes, per se, but every week or two one of them will cave and send the text. They lose themselves in each other’s skin and in those moments it feels so _real_ that it’s hard for Bellamy to remember that it’s _not_. 

After almost a year of their arrangement, neither of them have dated anyone since – Bellamy hasn’t so much as looked at another girl, knowing that it might nudge Clarke over the edge into ending what little they do have to preserve his chance at a relationship. 

If Bellamy had hit one more red light, he wouldn’t have made it in time. But as it is, he makes it to Clarke’s studio in record time to pick her up for lunch. He makes his way to the top of the old stone steps just in time to overhear her talking to Raven. 

“I don’t understand it, though. Why aren’t you just dating him? You and Bellamy are better together than at least 80% of the _actual_ couples that I know. Why won’t you just go for it?” 

Clarke laughs, entirely self-deprecating. “He doesn’t see me that way. I waited, like, six months to see if something would happen and when it didn’t I thought that maybe getting him into bed would help to push him along. But it’s been a year. If he actually wanted something with me, he would’ve said so by now.” 

Bellamy does his very best not to yell at Clarke about what an idiot she is when he walks into the studio. That is to say, Bellamy yells at Clarke about what an idiot she is, but he does it _quietly_. 

(Turns out, Clarke was so preoccupied with how badly she wanted to kiss Bellamy on that first fateful night that she didn’t hear a word he said as he poured his heart out.) 


	16. Mark My Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke hates hickeys. Bellamy loves them.

When they’d finally had sex for the first time, Clarke thought it was a fluke – the smattering of dark bruises scattered from her collarbone up to her ear. She assumed Bellamy was merely caught in the moment and didn’t register what he was doing. It didn’t seem worth talking about at the time.

But now, three months later, Clarke is sick of it. The moment Bellamy gets his hands on her, she turns to putty – brain flown completely out the window. She rarely has the wherewithal to tell him to stop playing vacuum cleaner along the column of her throat. Each morning after, she has to go through the lengthy process of trying to make the bruises abate (and failing) and then inevitably spending fifteen minutes doing her best to cover them with make up. She’s spent far too much money trying to cover up Bellamy’s adolescent love bites.

One night, when Bellamy comes over for dinner, she plays it on repeat in her head like a mantra. _Don’t let Bellamy leave hickeys. Don’t let Bellamy leave hickeys. Don’t let Bellamy leave hickeys._

The moment he leans in to kiss her, as they lay on the couch with full bellies, she pushes him back. She channels her inner-teacher and says to him, very sternly, “If you give me one more hickey I’m going to tell Octavia what really happened to her ferret.”

Bellamy’s face goes instantly sour and he pouts at her for a long moment. “Really?”

Clarke sighs, exasperated. “Really, Bell. I love you, but I refuse to cover up bruises every morning like a teenager. Restrain yourself, Hoover-man.” He huffs, but ultimately nods – doing his best to look as put out as possible while he does it.

For the first time since they’ve gotten together, Clarke wakes up and doesn’t have to worry about going into school with any evidence of last night on her skin.

It lasts for a week – one blissful week.

Clarke doesn’t think much of the beard that Bellamy grows out during the blissful week. It’s not as if he’s never tried facial hair before. She’s always been partial to it, actually, so she’s glad to see the roughness appear along his jaw. 

It’s not until Saturday that Clarke realizes her complacence may have gotten her into trouble. She walks into the bathroom, bleary-eyed and squinting from sleep. When her eyes finally adjust to the bathroom light, she’s midway through brushing her teeth. She actually _drops_ the toothbrush into the sink when she catches sight of herself in the mirror.

Beard burn. All around her mouth, up the side of her neck and down the front of her chest, over the tops of her breasts and even – painfully – over one nipple. Large expanses of her skin are red and irritated from the goddamn beard.

“BELLAMY!” Clarke bellows, instantly thrown into a rage.

She leaves her toothbrush abandoned in the sink, stomping out of the bathroom and back into the bedroom to grab her phone. 7 am be damned, she dials Octavia.

“Clarke…” Bellamy groans from bed, warning in his voice even if his eyes are still closed.

“Clarke?” Octavia greets on the other end of the phone, voice rough like Clarke’s just woken her up.

“Octavia, I’ve been keeping a secret from you.” Clarke opens, eyes glaring a hole into Bellamy’s chest.

“I didn’t break any rules, though!” Bellamy whines rolling over to pitifully swipe a hand at Clarke.

Clarke keeps her eyes focused on him, trying not to be swayed by his pouting lips. “It’s the spirit, not the letter of the law, Bellamy!”


	17. The Contest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Contest is, in short, a competition to see who can resist coming the longest. (More or less 1600 words of smut?)

The Contest rules are as follows:  
1) The Contest will take place on the next two Fridays.  
2) Each person gets one night to compete.  
3) The competitors turn must occur between 6 pm and 12 am on the day of their turn.  
4) The challenger gets to choose when and where the competitor’s turn takes place, and has the option not to warn the challenger beforehand.  
5) The challenger’s goal is to make their partner come as fast as possible - _using any means necessary_ excepting the exclusions noted below.  
6) The winner is the one who lasts the longest and will be the recipient of $100 from the loser. (Also, eternal pride.)

The following are excluded from the content, the use of any of the following will result in disqualification of the party in violation.  
a) No other people are to be involved.  
b) No _food_ allowed in the bedroom.  
c) Clarke is not allowed to make inaccurate historical references in an effort to try to distract Bellamy by goading him into an argument.

(Clarke argues the last point profusely, but eventually decides that he’s right – she would totally use that to win.)

If anyone asked why they decided to create The Contest, they’d probably say it was an attempt to spice up or renew their sex life. The truth is, though, that after two years of monogamy, they still can’t keep their hands off of each other. It actually came about more so due to both Bellamy’s and Clarke’s insane competitive streaks. 

They choose who gets to compete first by a coin toss – each recognizing that it was an advantage to have last licks. (Pun fully intended.) Bellamy loses the toss.

Clarke stays late at work, walks in the door at 6:01 precisely, pausing briefly to adjust to top of her dress for maximum cleavage and then straight up _ambushes_ Bellamy where he sits on the couch, watching some documentary. She’s going for the element of surprise, hoping that he didn’t just jerk himself off to try to stretch out his time (though it’s not against the rules) or down a few beers.

He hisses when she lowers herself into his lap. “Well, well, well, Griffin. Let the games begin.” His grin is 100% smug.

Clarke teases him briefly, all too aware of the fact that the clock is ticking, but Bellamy is all about the build up. If she gets him really tense first, he’ll pop in a minute flat – she knows from experience. So she’s not wasting time, she’s being proactive. She swears and whimpers his name in his ear, rolling her hips in his lap.

“I missed you, Bell.” She says, voice deep, but breathy, undulating her whole body so that her breasts bob in front of his face.

He fakes a yawn. “You just went to work, Clarke. You go to work every day. It’s a thing people to do make money so that they can, you know, eat.”

“But I’ve been thinking about you all day.” She unbuttons his shirt, scratching her nails along the exposed skin.

“Really?” Bellamy asks, voice near-bored despite the fact that Clarke can feel his interest growing through his jeans. “I was hungry, so I was mostly thinking about dinner. Do you want Chinese or Italian tonight?”

Clarke fights the urge to roll her eyes at him, knowing that it will ruin what little façade she has created here. “Anything you want.”

He nods and looks through her like she’s not even there. “Let’s go Chinese. I could really go for some egg rolls.”

Clarke briefly checks the clock on the wall in front of her – 6:06. She grinds down into his lap one more time and feels his whole body twitch despite his calm demeanor. When she stands, she turns away from Bellamy and bends at the waist to take off her shoes, presenting him with a front row seat to her ass in the process. When she shimmies out of her dress, she bends again to pull it off her ankles.

She stands in front of him in just white lace lingerie, the same set she’d worn last month when he dragged her into a janitor’s closet at a charity gala, rucked up her fancy gown and fucked her from behind, hand clamped over her mouth to keep her quiet. She’s hoping he remembers that night as fondly as she does, hoping that the memory makes _his_ mouth go dry, too.

(The clock now reads 6:11.)

Clarke leans in, tops of her breasts pressing against Bellamy’s bare chest as she whispers, “I’ve been wet for you all day, Bell.” It’s true, actually. The Contest might have been born of competition, but damn did it get her hot all day knowing that she was coming home to this. “Wanna see?”

Bellamy gulps, not even pretending to look away from her or hide his interest, though he does resist nodding. She drags the coffee table forward a few inches so that she can perch on the edge and plant her feet on either side of Bellamy’s hips on the couch. Clarke can _see_ the breath that stutters in his chest when she pulls her panties aside.

Slowly, she drags her other hand down her body, fingers caressing the lines of her stomach before settling between her thighs. She circles her clit slowly, eyes locked on Bellamy – his locked on her fingers. “God I’ve been waiting for this all day. Feels so good.” Clarke tosses her head back, knows how much Bellamy is fascinated by the arched line of her neck when she does.

Bellamy makes a sort of choked off sound – like he was going to say something, but stopped himself.

“It’s not as good as you though, baby. Can you help me?” Clarke whimpers, bites at her lip when she looks back at him.

Bellamy bites off a curse before dropping to his knees in the tight space between the couch and the coffee table. He bats her hand away and replaces his thumb over the tight nub of her clit, bending at the neck to lap at her opening. (Clarke checks the clock – 6:16 – she’s going to have him done by 6:25 tops.)

If there’s one thing Clarke had to pinpoint as Bellamy’s biggest turn on, it’s tasting her when she comes.

If he were smarter, he’d try to drag out _her_ orgasm tonight, but he’s not playing smart. All she has to do is whine a high-pitched, “Please Bell, please make me come.” Bellamy goes into overdrive, thumb ruthless in its pressure while his tongue flicks into her and all it takes is Clarke looking down, seeing him staring back at her and she’s gone.

It’s with great effort that she doesn’t allow herself to go boneless immediately after her orgasm. Typically, after she’s come she lays around for a few minutes, unwilling to even lift her body. (Later, she’ll realize that Bellamy was banking on this to buy him some time to calm himself down.)

Instead, she kicks the coffee table a few feet backwards – enough that she can pull Bellamy to sprawl onto the ground on his back. She undoes the button and zipper on his jeans and notes that it’s now 6:21, while he watches in surprise. The worry starts to show on his face as she tugs both his jeans and his boxers a few inches down his hips as he stubbornly refuses to lift them to make it easier.

Clarke takes a brief moment to tease him, fingers coming to cradle his balls as she runs her tongue up the underside of his shaft. She takes him down as far as she can in one smooth motion, loving the way his hips jump and he groans underneath her. She bobs her head up and back only for a minute, fingers creeping behind his balls to press at the thin skin behind them.

Bellamy swears, none-too-quietly, and spills into her mouth without warning. It’s even quicker than Clarke expected, so she has to battle the urge to pull back, fighting to keep working him through the sudden orgasm.

“Twenty-three minutes.” She tells him smugly when he pulls her into his chest, clothes still askew.

“Dammit. I thought I could hold you off for at least forty.” He tells her with a sigh. “I wasn’t expecting you to use – well, you.”

“Sucks to suck, Blake. Hope you’ve got a hundred bucks lying around because you’re going down!”

_______________________________________________________________

Bellamy plays the long game, keeping his hands off of Clarke _all week_. He even makes a point of having people interrupt her when she’s home alone for long stretches. He does everything in his power to ensure that, when her turn rolls around on Saturday, she hasn’t gotten off since it was _his_ turn. Clarke has the uncanny ability to be incredibly stubborn, even when it comes to sex, so he's not sure that he really has a shot at winning unless he goes for broke.

He, too, is hoping to more or less surprise her into an orgasm.

It’s 6:00 on the dot when he drags her into the bedroom. She rolls her eyes, because she knows it’s coming and she’s expecting something _typical_ from him if her snarky comment is anything to go by.

She strips easily, eyebrows lifting like being naked is a challenge or something. Bellamy doesn’t rise to it, knows that Clarke gets off on the vulnerability of being naked when he’s not, even if she won’t say it out loud.

She squeals when Bellamy lifts her off the floor. It’s a moment of awkward maneuvering – and he’s glad he had the foresight to bring her into the bedroom where he has a bed to break their fall if he needs to- but then he’s got her thighs wrapped around his neck, arms clutching tightly to his waist, and her pussy bared millimeters from his mouth.

She comes less than a minute after he gets his mouth on her – a grand total of 5 minutes since he brought her into the bedroom.


	18. Sleep Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke talks in her sleep and Bellamy uses it to his advantage.

“The Russians have the purple wallaby!”

Bellamy rolls over, cracks an eye at Clarke’s sleeping form and snorts.

Clarke talks in her sleep. Not always. It doesn’t happen every night, which is probably why Bellamy didn’t realize it before they moved in together, even though they’d spent their fair share of nights together before that point. Maybe she just wasn’t comfortable enough with him at that point. Is that a thing? Do people have to be comfortable to sleep-talk? He’s not sure.

He makes a point of writing down what she says most nights. He actually keeps a journal of Clarkes sleep-talking in his nightstand drawer. One day, he thinks he might write a novel inspired by one of the crazy things she says. Some kind of comedy slash thriller slash buddy cop slash mystery story.

Four months into living together, he realizes that once she starts talking in her sleep, he can talk to her and she’ll answer. It starts innocently enough. She’d rolled into him, snuggled herself into his side and whispered, very seriously, “I think they know about the fajitas.”

Bellamy had suppressed a laugh, as had become the norm when he’s awake enough to hear her talk, and asked, “What about the fajitas, baby?”

She’d curled her hand into his shirt and told him, “That they’re not from Mexico.” And that had been an enlightening moment.

He started using it to his advantage. He’d talk to her in the middle of the night, asking her questions that he couldn’t ask during the day, secure in the knowledge that she wouldn’t remember in the morning.

Late in November of their first year of living together, Bellamy stays up until Clarke starts mumbling about Slovak pickles and then he pounces. “Are you excited for Christmas?” He asks, wanting to start innocuously.

“I love Christmas.” Clarke tells him, eyes still closed, breathing even.

“What can I get you for Christmas, Clarke?”

He holds his breath while he waits for her response, worried he might be pushing his lucky. His worry is for nothing, though, since Clarke just hums and tells him that she really needs a new easel.

When he presents her with a new easel for Christmas the next month – one that he hand made to be adjustable and stained to match their living room furniture – she squeals in delight and jumps on him. “Bell, it’s perfect! How did you know?”


	19. Constellations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy wakes up one morning to Clarke painting on his face.

Bellamy wakes up to a strange tickling feeling on his cheek. It’s not quite as soft as fingers or as light as something being dragged just over the skin. He opens his eyes to find that he’s still immersed in darkness – something is laid over them. It’s soft, like a t-shirt.

When he moves to lift the make-shift blindfold, a hand clamps down on his own. “Stop it, you’re going to ruin my awesome surprise.”

Clarke. Of course it’s Clarke. Who else would it be?

“Care to share what you’re doing there?” He asks, voice still groggy from sleep.

“Nice rhyming, Dr. Seuss.” She teases. “Didn’t you hear the part where I said it was an awesome _surprise_?”

“I think you’ve surprised my enough for one week already.” Bellamy grins, hand reaching out blindly for Clarke as he recalls the week leading up to this morning.

Monday had been his birthday. Clarke gifted him with a hand-made jigsaw puzzle, because the number one thing that Bellamy loves is things that Clarke makes and the number two thing is figuring shit out. Each night as he worked on the large puzzle, she’d hovered over him more than usual and it was suspicious to say the least. Last night he’d finally finished it and he was so preoccupied with gloating over solving the picture-less, circular, giant-ass puzzle that he hadn’t stopped to read it.

_You’re going to be a daddy!_

When Clarke had finally gotten him to focus on it for long enough to read it, he’d cried. 

Clarke grips his wandering hand now and indulges him by settling it on her belly. It’s exactly where he wanted it to be. “Okay, to be fair, that was probably a better surprise than this is, but this is going to be pretty great, too. Just give me two more minutes.” 

When she finally lifts the t-shirt from his eyes, he can’t see anything different. “What am I supposed to be looking for?”

“Come on.” She tugs him off the bed and drags him into the bathroom, standing him in front of the mirror.

His face is covered in white paint. She’s connected dozens of the freckles that line his face into makeshift constellations (which are not scientifically accurate, he feels the need to point out.) “This is your awesome surprise?”

Clarke shrugs behind him, grinning wide. “I lied to keep you still. I’ve been waiting to play connect the dots with your freckles since literally the day that I met you, but I always kind of figured that you’d kill me if I did. I waited for the opportune moment to make it happen. Can’t kill me now daddy-o because I’m having your baby.”

Bellamy actually face palms. Some of the white paint smears onto his hand. “You’re a little bit crazy, you know that?” He spins so that he can drag Clarke into the circle of his arms.

“You caught me. It was all part of my dastardly plan. Make you fall hopelessly in love with me, marry me, get me pregnant and then reveal that I’m actually a little bit crazy.”


	20. The Tattoo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke abruptly realizes she might have a thing about tattoos.

Spring Break was a great idea.

Octavia had hauled Clarke, Raven, Maya, Jasper and Monty into the big SUV she’d rented and dragged them all to one tiny motel room on the beach. Clarke wasn’t exactly thrilled at the prospect of sharing such a small space with all of her friends, but it turned out to be just what she needed.

For six days they spent all night partying at the bars and all day sleeping on the beach. Aside from the occasional shower and a few minutes to change, they were hardly even _in_ the crappy motel room. Unfortunately, Clarke’s a worry-about-the-future kind of person and so when Friday rolls around, she’s already distracted thinking about everything she has to do when she gets back to school on Monday.

She’s mentally calculating how much time she needs to devote to each of her classes next week when the sun she’d been tanning in is abruptly blocked. “Hey!” Clarke protests, sitting up quickly, ready to yell at her intruder.

What she’s _not_ expecting is Bellamy Blake standing in front of her in board shorts, a white t-shirt and Ray Bans, smirking. “Nice to see you again, too, Princess.”

Clarke swallows, her mouth feeling suddenly dry. She hasn’t seen Bellamy since Christmas break. More precisely, she hasn’t seen Bellamy since New Year’s Day, when she snuck out of his bed. It wasn’t the first time they’d hooked up. It, unfortunately, also wasn’t the first time that Clarke had run away like a coward afterward. It’s just easier for her to settle for those stolen moments and run than to sit still and see what happens when the dust settles. 

“What are you doing here? I thought you couldn’t get off work.” Working two jobs makes it hard to coordinate any time off, let alone time off during one of the busiest weeks of the year for the bar – considering it’s spring break for most of the universities in the area.

“Managed to scrounge a few days. Miller and I drove down to surprise you guys.” Bellamy crouches so that he’s eye level with Clarke where she sits in her lounge chair and takes off his sunglasses. “Surprised?”

“That’s one way to put it.” Clarke admits, wondering if they’re going to face this head on or dance around each other all day.

Bellamy tugs his shirt off in one smooth motion and throws it at her face. “I’ll be in the water if you need me.” He pauses for a moment, ostensibly stretching before his swim, but Clarke’s fairly certain that he’s just doing it to torture her with his bare skin. So that answers her question – they’re definitely not facing this head on.

It’s not until he turns to jog to water that she sees the black ink dancing across his shoulder blade. _He got a tattoo._ It’s hard to make out what it is as he retreats, but it looks like a bunch of interlocking circles. Gears, maybe? Clarke sighs, knowing that she’s not going to be able to resist a closer look. She places her own sunglasses to the side of her lounge and gives chase after Bellamy. 

It continues that way for the rest of Friday and most of Saturday. Any time the swirling black ink shows, Clarke finds herself transfixed by it. She wasn’t aware that she was attracted to tattoos until she saw his. 

Saturday night they go to a club for their last night of Spring Break. Bellamy wears this ridiculous tank top with A-bro-ham Lincoln on it that says “Abolish Sleevery.” Clarke’s first reaction when she sees the front is to laugh and tell him that he’s the dumbest person ever. Her first reaction upon seeing how it cuts far enough over for some of the cogs of his tattoo to show is mostly just to swoon.

“This is a thing for you, isn’t it?” He asks, eyebrow raised as he offers her a drink a few hours later.

“Bars?”

“The ink.” He nods backwards toward his own shoulder. “You can’t stop looking at it.”

Clarke scoffs. “Maybe I’m just shocked that you could be so stupid as to permanently mark your body with something so ridiculous.”

Bellamy smirks and hands Clarke his own drink so that he can reach back and pull the ridiculous tank top off. (Everyone in a 20-foot radius who’s attracted to men collectively sighs.) He turns so that she’s confronted with the full expanse of the tattoo again. “It’s an astronomical clock.” Bellamy explains, head turned so that he’s half looking at her over his shoulder. “Set to the moment my mother died. I got it in February – a memorial of sorts.”

That shouldn’t be hot.

It’s sweet. Endearing. Adorable. Something that should make her coo and reach out to cradle Bellamy’s face in her hand or hug him or something.

But it shouldn’t make her want to _lick_ the damn ink.

Clarke has never been great a normal social interactions though, and dammit she’s been thinking about it for the last 36 hours, so she shouldn’t really be surprised with herself when she does lean in and place an open-mouthed kiss over the tattoo, tracing her tongue lightly to see if she can feel a change where the ink ends. Bellamy shivers under her ministrations. Surprisingly, no one around them even reacts to the sudden, bizarre PDA.

When Clarke lifts her mouth Bellamy turns back toward her, smirking. “I knew it. You’ve got a real thing for the ink.”

“Shut up.” Clarke whines, letting her forehead fall onto his shoulder to hide her flush. “Your place or mine?” She whispers into his skin, referring to either the common motel room that she and the rest of the group have been sharing or the room that Bellamy and Miller got for themselves for the weekend. She’s confident he heard it.

“That depends.”

“On?”

Bellamy grins, his smile wry. “You’ve got less of a chance of sneaking out of your place in the morning.”

“Let’s go to yours then.” Clarke decides, sliding her hand down his arm to twine her fingers with his.

“Planning on running away again, Princess?”

“Nope. Planning on sticking around and I’d rather not be interrupted when Jasper comes stumbling in.”


	21. The Frogs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Care to explain why my bathroom is full of frogs?"

Bellamy is the picture of grumpiness when he walks into the living room. Arms crossed, brows drawn down, mouth screwed into a grimace. “Care to explain why my bathroom is full of frogs?” He asks.

Clarke and Octavia both jolt on the couch, trying their best to look at the other and figure out a plan while also trying _not_ to look at each other so that they don’t look suspicious. Naturally, it fails miserably.

“Well, you see…” Octavia starts, hand slapping against Clarke’s thigh to get her to continue.

“The uh – oh, fuck it. The biology lab was going to do a frog dissection and O and I were talking about it and we’re anti-dissection. No frog should have to give its life for stupid freshman biology students.” Clarke shrugs, trying her best to look unapologetic. Fake it until you make it, right?

Bellamy quirks an eyebrow and, truth be told, he’s taking this better than Clarke and Octavia anticipated because he hasn’t started throwing threats around yet. “So you broke into the biology lab and what? You didn’t just _free_ the frogs because then they’d be out in the field behind the school or something. You actually made a point of _transporting_ a hundred frogs from the school to my house and then decided that the bathroom was the place to put them?”

Octavia steps in, thankfully, because Clarke is still fairly intimidated by her older brother – even if he’s not threatening them yet. “We figured that if we just set them free they’d be able to catch them again. Those frogs are fugitives, Bell! We’ve gotta help them lie low for a couple days before we can release them and they can be free.”

“Even if we put out of the picture how insane this is; did you forget that this house only has one bathroom? I opened the door like four inches and was practically up to my ears in croaking frogs. What are you expecting to do for the next few days while your froggy friends lie low?”

Clarke clears her throat, feels her cheeks flush. “Well, I guess we didn’t really….”

“And I’m assuming you _got_ the frogs here in a box and then took them out of the box. Now there are a hundred frogs hopping around our bathroom. How, exactly, do you expect to re-catch a hundred frogs without letting any of them escape?”

It’s Octavia’s turn to take the heat, so she stutters her way through a, “Well, I was thinking that maybe we could have one person…”

“And if you get caught for this, what kind of trouble do you think you’re going to be in? You know I’m on thin ice with CPS, O. What were you thinking?”

Both girls hang their heads in shame, guilt washing over them. Let the record show that at twenty-one, Bellamy has already mastered the art of the parental guilt trip. He didn’t yell. He didn’t ever make the threats that Clarke had anticipated. He was calm and collected through the whole thing and still she feels like she’s been gutted.

“I’ll take the fall for it.” Clarke offers. “It’s not like I wasn’t a big part of it to begin with. We can – let’s go grab the box and we can get the frogs out of here tonight and then if anything happens it’ll be me who takes the blame. I’m sorry, Bellamy.”

Bellamy sighs and lets his own head droop forward. “I’m sorry, too. I know you were just trying to do what you felt was right. I’m not angry, I just. Dammit, I really have to pee and I can’t because you put a hundred frogs in my only bathroom!”

They all burst into laughter now that the tension is broken because, yeah, maybe Clarke and Octavia really didn’t think that one through.

It takes them three hours to capture all of the frogs again. At one point, Bellamy resorts to talking like Kermit because he thinks it should entice them. Octavia starts singing songs from the Princess and the Frog for the same reason and when Clarke tries to join in the singing, she’s told she’s too off-key and she’s scaring the frogs. After that, she gets relegated to searching through the apartment to capture all of the escaped frogs.


	22. For Science!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _”I wish you could suck dick half as well as you suck the fun out of everything!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this started out as a 100% crack!fic based on an tweet I saw somewhere. So, naturally, because apparently I'm incapable of anything else, it turned into fluff. Oops!

It’s not like she usually frets about this kind of stuff. Clarke’s pretty confident in her own skills in all aspects of life, sex included. She’s really just generally pretty self-assured. And it shouldn’t really change anything for her. She hadn’t even sucked the guy’s dick! She’d just danced with him at a club a few weeks ago and when his hands started wandering to placed she didn’t want them wandering, Clarke had turned him down. The guy clearly wasn’t happy about it and had wound up yelling at her as he stomped off.

_”I wish you could suck dick half as well as you suck the fun out of everything!_

She’s just been puzzling the statement ever since. Is it meant to be a compliment? If he’s saying she sucks the fun out of things, then he’s complimenting her, isn’t he? Or maybe it’s supposed to be an insult? It feels like an insult.

Clarke is pondering it again in the library, too caught up in curiosity and frustration to focus much on the lab report in front of her, when Bellamy throws himself into the chair next to her. “What’s got you thinking so hard, Princess?” He reaches out and rubs his thumb over the crease that’s surely indented into her forehead.

“Am I bad at giving head?” Clarke asks before she can stop herself.

Bellamy goes instantly white as a sheet, eyes bugging out. “What?”

Clarke blinks at him, but ultimately figures that if she’s in for a pinch, she’s in for a pound. “You know. Oral sex? Am I bad at it?”

Bellamy’s eyebrows are practically into his hairline now. “Was there a night where I got really drunk or something? Or did I have to give up my most prized memory for a miracle somewhere along the line? Because I’m pretty sure if you ever sucked me off, that’d be it.”

“No! At least, not that I know of.” Clarke sighs. “I’ve never sucked _your_ dick, but you’re a guy. Guys talk. And you used to live with Finn and I—just, have you ever heard anyone talking about it? Me being bad at –“

Bellamy claps a hasty hand over her mouth. “Yeah, yeah, I get it.” His cheeks are flushed and he’s looking anywhere but Clarke’s mouth. It’s kind of cute, actually. “To answer your question, no. I’ve never talked to anyone about _that_ and _you_.”

Clarke nods and that’s it for the moment. With her fear somewhat mollified, she’s able to go back to concentrating long enough to finish her lab before it’s due. The thing is, though, it doesn’t just _disappear_ from her mind. Because the more she thinks about it, the more she realizes that no one has ever explicitly told her that she’s _good_ at it either.

Two weeks later she drinks half a bottle of wine and drags herself to Bellamy’s apartment. He’s in flannel pajama bottoms with no shirt, hair askew with his glasses on. It’s _adorable_. She probably should’ve checked the time before showing up unannounced, though.

“I need you to let me suck your dick.” She tells him eloquently as she stands in the middle of his communal apartment hallway.

He jumps two feet in the air and shushes her before dragging her over the threshold. “Don’t say shit like that, Clarke.” He scolds once they’re inside.

Clarke whines. “But it’s for science, Bell!” She’s thought this through (she’s pretty sure.) She just needs someone to reassure her that she’s not the world’s worst giver of head and then she can go back to her normal life and stop thinking about it all the time. She and Bellamy are close friends – best friends, even – so she’s confident it won’t ruin their relationship. And he gets a blow job out of it. It’s a win-win-win situation.

“For science.” He repeats, deadpan.

“Yes. Science.”

Bellamy sighs, hand scratching absently at his bare chest. “Clarke, you’re drunk.”

“Yeah, but the way I figure all that does it help me relax. It’ll make it better. Come on, please?” She bats her eyelashes at him – or rather, tries. It mostly winds up being her blinking at him really aggressively and repeatedly.

“No!” He yells, a little too loudly and a little too quickly.

Clarke bristles immediately because now she’s thinking that yeah, maybe he was lying. Maybe he _has_ heard something and she’s actually so bad at this that he’s rejecting her totally no-strings-attached platonic blow job.

His hands are warm where they land on her shoulders to brace her. “Clarke, you’re drunk and I don’t want you to do anything you’re going to regret in the morning. Come on, let’s just go to bed instead.”

“You’re really turning me down?” Clarke asks, mortified to find her throat constricting with emotion.

Bellamy curls his fingers around her chin to tilt her head back up so that he can lean in and drop a chaste kiss to her forehead. “In the morning, you can proposition me all you want, but for right now we’re going to sleep.”

In the morning, Clarke asks again because she figures she’s already thrown her dignity out the window at this point so why not?

“Let me get this straight,” Bellamy starts, fiddling with the stove where he’s frying eggs. “You’re begging me to let you suck my dick because some guy in a bar insinuated that you might not be good at it and you’re looking for a second opinion.”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“That’s the only reason?” He prompts, looking at her sideways.

Clarke sighs, does her best _not_ to stomp her foot or do anything equally as petulant. “Yes! I’ve just got a point to prove here, Blake. Are you in or are you out?”

“Out.” He says decisively, flipping the eggs out of the pan.

“Out?” Clarke repeats, dumbfounded. Turning her down because she was drunk is one thing. In hindsight, she would’ve expected nothing less from Bellamy. But now? In the sober light of morning? That really does sting.

He turns the burner off, then, and spins to face her head on. “Listen up and listen good, Griffin, because in the interest of not making this friendship ridiculously awkward, this is the only time I’m ever going to say this. I’m not saying no because I don’t want you – saying no might actually be the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But I’m saying it because I’m not wiling to settle for some weird spite hook up with you. When I finally get you to myself – and trust me, I will, we’ve got a 5-year plan going here – it’s just going to be you and me in the room. No douchebag club guy’s ghost hanging over us. And it’s not going to be _for science_ , it’s going to be because you’re in love with me, too. Got it?”

Clarke blinks at him for a moment before finally nodding. “Okay.”

______________________________________________________________

(It’s another three months before Clarke finally gets herself together enough to accept that she has _feelings_ for Bellamy. Real, strong, white picket fence, 2.4 kids, ride off into the sunset kind of feelings. When she admits it to him, he just grins and tells her that they’re three years ahead of schedule, but he’ll take it.

Later, Bellamy tells Clarke that she’s the best he’s ever had. She’s 50-50 on whether or not he’s lying to spare her feelings, but then again she doesn’t quite care because no matter what other girls may be able to do with their mouths, _she’s_ the one he’s in love with.)


	23. Apology Breakfast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy wakes up and finds himself in bed with a naked, bruised Clarke Griffin. (He's never been more mortified.)

This isn’t something that Bellamy does often – take a girl home from a bar. Octavia often teases him about being a monk. He’s mostly content with with his life how it is. He doesn’t need any women in his life besides his sister, She’s more than enough of a handful for him.

But, well, Miller had convinced him to go to the bar and once he was there it hadn’t been too hard to convince him to have a couple of beers. Then, once he’d had a couple of beers, it was nothing to tell him that he should really go talk to the pretty blonde who’d been smirking at him from across the bar. As soon as he’d introduced himself and she’d said his name like that – her tongue curling around the L’s, lips pouting on the Y, her voice sultry and sweet – he couldn’t even stop himself asking her if she wanted to come back to his place.

He doesn’t regret bringing the hot blonde - _Clarke_ , he reminds himself – home. He doesn’t regret taking her to bed or what he _thinks_ was great sex. He does regret that last beer, though, because he doesn’t quite remember what happened after they got home.

When he wakes up in the morning, Clarke is still laying next to him which is, if he’s being honest, a pleasant surprise. It’s Saturday, which means that Bellamy has nothing he needs to get up for. Instead, he rolls over and curls a hand around Clarke’s ribcage, fingers sweeping across her bare skin. It is, he thinks briefly, one of the best ways he’s woken up in a long time.

Until he sees it. Or, well, _them._

Along her hip are five long bruises that, when he lines up his hand, match his fingers perfectly. If they’re this dark already, he’s sure they’re going to be worse in a few hours. And no doubt there’s a matching set on her other hip. Bellamy throws his head back and sighs. He doesn’t _remember_ getting rough with her last night, but then again he doesn’t remember anything. 

He loves it – pinning a woman or holding her right where he wants her with whatever force necessary – even loves leaving marks just like the ones Clarke’s hips bear now. But he _knows_ that it’s in the top three things you should never do to a woman without her consent and he has no idea if he got her consent or not. If he was drunk enough to black out, he probably didn’t even think to stop and bring it up.

Fuck. He’s the worst.

Bellamy groans and slides out of bed as quietly as possible so as not to wake Clarke. She’s going to be pissed when he wakes up, so the least he can do is cook her up something nice for breakfast to help soften her back up. He wants to see her again. Sometime during the day when he’s sober.

In the end, Bellamy has a veritable buffet laid out for her on the counter. He has no basis for knowing what she likes, so he just made everything in his cupboard. There are pancakes – plain, chocolate chip and blueberry – fried bacon, baked bacon, scrambled eggs, sunny-side up eggs, cheddar, pepper jack and Swiss on the side that she can add at will, French toast and some fresh cut fruit. He’s dithering over whether or not he should whip up a few omelets when Clarke saunters into the kitchen in the underwear she’d been wearing the night before.

She’s teasing her fingers through her hair when she stops and grins. “You got an army coming over or something? Should I be making myself more presentable?”

Bellamy feels his cheeks heat. Maybe this wasn’t the best of plans. “No, it’s just you. I wasn’t sure what you liked.”

Clarke surveys the table, ultimately picking up a strawberry and placing it between her lips. “You could’ve just taken me out for breakfast so I could order whatever I felt like, you know? Or you could’ve just woken me up to ask.”

“I didn’t want to – I just thought.” Bellamy runs a hand through his hair, wincing when it gets caught in a knot. He deserves that sharp tug, though, he thinks. “I was trying to apologize.”

Clarke looks at him out of the corner of her eye. “What are you apologizing for? Did I miss something? Is this the part where you tell me you have herpes?”

Bellamy’s own eyes go wide in response. “Did we not use a condom?” He blurts, frantic.

Clarke shakes her head, mouth pulled up into a small smirk. “No, of course we did, but that answers my question. You don’t remember last night.”

“I do! I do, I swear. I remember meeting you and talking to you and bringing you home. You’re Clarke, you’re still in med school. You live with your best friend who also happens to be your ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend and he dated you both at the same time. You’re kind of…awesome.” He ducks his head. “I just might not remember anything after that.”

“So you made me twelve different breakfasts to apologize for corrupting an innocent woman and getting rough with me?”

Bellamy blinks at her. “Actually, uh, yeah, that was exactly what I was going for..”

Clarke comes up behind him where he’s flipping the last of the blueberry pancake off the griddle and circles her arms around him. “For the record, if you had gotten rough with me against my will last night, copious breakfast foods wouldn’t make it up to me. Also for the record, you were a perfect gentleman. I had to beg you for it.”

And, fuck, as if he weren’t kicking himself for not remembering last night already. Clarke begging seems like it might’ve been one of the greatest things he could’ve ever heard.

Clarke pats his back, like she’s feeling the tension that’s zinging through his body, and lowers her voice to say, “Don’t worry, baby. Let me eat some of this feast so I can get my energy back and then give me twenty minutes and I’ll be ready for a repeat performance.


	24. In Living Color

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soul mate AU where you see in black and white until you meet your soul mate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wrote this one a while ago, but I've dithered about posting it as a one-shot or potentially expanding it into a multi-chapter. (I'm a sucker for soul mates.)

At thirty, Clarke hasn’t yet met her soul mate. She is an artist who lives her life in black and white – literally. She has crafted a niche sort of corner of the high-end art market. She paints abstract canvases in shades of grey, and people who have found their soul mates already – those who cam _see_ the colors that she uses – come from all along the eastern seaboard to buy her work.

They always look at her with pity in their eyes because she can’t see her paintings the way that they can. There’s a general feeling that, though Clarke is a critically-acclaimed artist, her life is somehow lesser without color. Her work is sometimes called “coincidence” or “luck.”

“One day, you will see the amazing things you’ve created.” Her buyers tell her, reaching out to pat her back condescendingly.

Clarke is an anomaly. It’s not just that she’s a black-and-white artist. At thirty, still seeing black-and-white, she is a minority to say the least. Most people find their soul mate before twenty. 98% of people find theirs before thirty. At thirty, she has a greater chance of actually having been born _without_ a soul mate than she does of finding one.

It doesn’t bother her. She likes her black-and-white world, likes the success she’s found and is proud of her work. Some days she worries that if she starts seeing color, she’ll no longer be a good artist. Or worse, she worries that she’ll no longer be proud of what she’s created if she sees it in a new way.

They say it’s different for different people. Some get color in the blink of an eye the first time they see their soul mate. For some it comes gradually after meeting. For others, there are milestones at which different colors appear – first words, first kiss, etc. Clarke always thought that, for her – if it ever happened – it’d be something gradual, considering how long it’s taken so far.

She’s on her way home from the studio after a long night. She’s just finished a commission painting. Considering she and her buyer see the world in different ways, it’s hard to commission an exact painting, so instead this buyer had asked for a _feeling_.

Since her studio and her apartment are on opposite sides of the city, she takes the subway home. It’s quieter at this time of night on a Tuesday. She chooses to stand, despite the numerous empty seats – she’s always been partial to subway surfing. Near her sit two guys who are arguing loudly – possibly drunkenly – about the political realism in The Hunger Games. 

It happens, quite literally, in the blink of an eye. Clarke is standing on the subway in black and white. The train lurches to a start and she’s so consumed in the argument next to her that she forgets to brace herself. She topples forward, eyes squeezed shut for the impact and ready to break her fall with her hands. The impact, though, never comes. A strong hand wraps around her waist to keep her upright and when she opens her eyes her heart jumps into her throat.

_Color._

It’s not something that she can describe, but she wants to be able to. She wants to know the names of every color she’s seeing now. In black and white the subway looked dingy and bland. In color, some part of Clarke recognizes that it’s not going to be the most vibrant of places, but it’s _still_ overwhelming with the nuance. The seats are bright in comparison to the cool metal of the walls and the poles. The floor is splotched with the color of forgotten gum in various places.

When she rights herself and turns, she’s bombarded with her savior in full color. He looks like the embodiment of warmth – feels like it, too – and she can see now the freckles that dance along his skin in a way that she couldn’t in black and white. He smiles at her and the contrast in color between his teeth and his skin makes Clarke’s stomach flutter.

She’s been so overwhelmed that she hasn’t even stopped to think of other possibilities, but the way this guy is grinning at her goofily with his eyes darting all around her face tells her that _he_ must be seeing in color, too.

The guy still sitting down groans and says, “Of fucking course.”

It breaks them both out of the trance.

Clarke pulls herself firmly back to her feet and out of the stranger’s – _her soul mate’s_ \- arms. She clears her throat and extends her hand, “Clarke Griffin.”

His hand feels warm in hers. “Bellamy Blake.”

After she starts to see in color, everything changes. Clarke starts painting in only black and white. Her customers no longer look at her with pity in their eyes, but rather envy as they take in the casual arm slung around her shoulders at all of her showings, or the warm hand that laces through her own for support.

It was worth the wait, she thinks.


	25. Is Cereal Soup?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A philosophical discussion? Maybe.

Bellamy blames Jasper for it. Whole-heartedly.

Sure, it was _Miller_ who had brought it up to Bellamy yesterday, but _Monty_ was the one who asked Miller the day before and Bellamy is 99% positive that _Jasper_ is the one who got Monty started.

He wants to dismiss the stupid thought problem, but it feels like a challenge and he never backs down from a challenge. The problem is, he really doesn’t know what the answer is. It’s not until he’s a half hour into his date with Clarke – all but ignoring every word she’s saying, mind you – that he realizes he has a problem. A serious problem. If he’s _ignoring Clarke_ he should maybe just be committed already.

“I need to ask you a question.” Bellamy blurts as their meals arrive. He’s pretty sure he’s just interrupted Clarke mid-sentence, but she seems remarkably amicable to being interrupted tonight.

“Go for it.” She says with a shrug.

Bellamy shakes his head. “No, no, it’s a really important question. I need you to be _you_ here. By that, I mean that I need you to stubbornly pick one side and defend it to your death. It’d be great if you could pull out solid logic, too, so that you can convince me and I can move on with my life.”

There’s a long pause wherein she scrutinizes him, like she thinks he might be kidding. (He doesn’t blame her.) “Lay it on me, Bell.”

“Is cereal soup?”

Clarke opens her mouth immediately, like she’s got a ready-made retort, and then she snaps it shut with an audible click. Eventually, she says, “Obviously.”

“I’m going to need some convincing. Shouldn’t soup be warm?”

“No. Gazpacho is cold. And you can have sweet soups like chilled fruit soup, so it’s not like soup has to be savory. I think that soup, by definition, is a liquid – a broth one might say – with solid components. To be fair, those solid components could be blended into the soup like in a tomato soup, or could remain whole like in chicken noodle soup. In cereal, the liquid is the milk and the solid component is the cereal itself. Therefore, soup.” Clarke explains, looking more and more confident as she speaks. “But I think it’s also fair to say that cereal is soup in the way that tomatoes are fruit. Is it technically true? Sure. Would I advertise cereal in a soup menu in a restaurant? Hell no, but I also wouldn’t put tomatoes in fruit salad.”

Bellamy runs through her logic, looking for holes, pleased when he doesn’t find any, finally feeling like his mind can be at rest. “God, I love you.” He breathes.

Clarke drops her fork back onto her plate and stares at him wide-eyed. “You realize that’s the first time you’ve said that, right?”

And, oh yeah, she’s right. He hopes her stunned reaction is a good thing. “No, I guess I didn’t, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I do – love you, I mean.”

“I love you, too, you know.” Clarke says, looking up at him from under her lashes.

Maybe Bellamy _blames_ Jasper for making him ponder the definition of soup for the last twenty-four hours, but in the end he’s grateful to where it brought him. He’ll never tell Jasper that, though.


	26. Pick Up Artist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy conducts an elaborate pick-up scheme that involves dumping coffee all over a girl.

Getting coffee on her shirt is not exactly out of the ordinary for Clarke. She drinks a lot of coffee – Raven keeps telling her that she might actually have a problem – and she tends to do at least five things at once, which means that more often than not, coffee winds up on her shirt at some point in the day.

What’s different, though, is the fact that it’s not her spilling coffee on her shirt. It’s some random guy in the coffee shop she’s been sitting in, trying to work on the case study she was supposed to hand in to her supervisor _yesterday_. It’s probably the shock that makes her shriek. 

“HOLY SHIT!” Clarke squawks through the coffee shop, jumping to her feet so fast that she knocks her chair over. She’s leaning forward, letting her shirt droop off of her chest to try to let the coffee drip onto the floor and keep the heat off of her skin. (Later, she would realize that the coffee was actually only lukewarm.)

“Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry!” The guy says – except, he doesn’t look very sorry. In fact, he’s smirking. “Your shirt’s not looking so good. I think I can help. Come on,” he cocks his head toward the door, “I don’t live too far from here and I think it’ll look a lot better on my floor.”

Clarke’s jaw drops and she gapes at him for a long moment. “Seriously?” She finally asks, brows climbing high on her forehead. The shirt-ruiner just continues grinning her way, although he does have the decency to drop his eyes toward the ground. “Did you really just dump coffee on my shirt as a work around to _hit on me?_ ”

“Well that depends.”

“On?”

“Did it work?” When he brings his eyes back to hers and she’s faced with the full force of his stupidly cute face, she has to admit that this sheepish thing is working for him. To be fair, most things would probably work for a guy like him – perfect cheek bones, bright smile, freckles dusting around his whole face, warm, puppy-dog eyes, that cute floppy hair.

“I’d like to say I’m still thinking about it, but honestly, if anything is working for you it’s _in spite of_ that move, not because of it.”

The guy perks up then, grin twisting into something a bit cockier. “So do you want to get out of here, then?” Clarke raises a brow at him and looks between him and her ruined shirt. “Shit maybe I didn’t think this through.”

“ _That’s_ the part you didn’t think through?”

When he laughs, it’s rich and bounces off of the tiled walls. He extends his hand and Clarke just can’t help but to take it. “Bellamy.”

“Bellamy.” Clarke repeats, because it’s not a name she’s ever heard before and it’s tempting to see how it feels on her tongue.

“As much as I like the way you sound saying my name – and don’t get me wrong, later I fully intend to find out how it sounds when you’re on the brink of coming, begging me to push you over – I’d like to know who’s name I should be saying later.”

“Clarke.” She says, biting back a smile at his brazenness.

“So, Clarke, what do you say to dinner tonight? And before you say no, remember that I owe you now for your shirt. If you say no, I’ll just keep feeling guilty and you don’t want that, do you? Dessert is your call, though.”


	27. Bellamy 2.0

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke names her new pillow Bellamy 2.0 because it does everything he can - only better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew, just in the nick of time!! (11 pm EST on 3/28)

When Clarke comes pouting to Bellamy at six months pregnant that she’s not sleeping well, he loses it a little. To be fair, he admits that this pregnancy is making him more than a little crazy. He just wants to make sure that his kid has the best possible life that he or she can. He doesn’t want his kid to have a childhood that mirrors his own and that means that he’s starting _now_.

Mostly, though, pampering his kid now means that he just pampers his wife. He tries his best to make sure that Clarke’s life is as stress-free as possible. If he started wearing a suit he could easily qualify as a butler.

Sleep is critical for Clarke and their baby-to-be. If she’s not sleeping, he needs to fix it and he needs to fix it _now._

It’s that very train of thought that leads Bellamy to one of those giant housewares stores with everything from kitchen products to bedding to Christmas decorations. He’s armed with a picture of a ridiculous looking pillow that every forum on the internet assures him is _the_ solution to sleepless nights during pregnancy. It looks sort of like a giant candy cane, but weirder and about a hundred times more expensive. But the price doesn’t matter if this is going to do what the reviewers promised.

When he comes home toting the ridiculously giant pillow, Clarke looks at it skeptically to say the least. “Did you kill someone?” Is the first question she asks, nodding at the large bag slung over his shoulder.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Bellamy scolds. And then, because he knows it will make her smile, he snarks, “Do you really think I’d be stupid enough to bring the body to my own apartment?”

She does smile and he feels his own mouth tugging in response. “Then do you care to explain what you have there?”

“Pillow for you. It’s supposed to help you sleep.” He could launch into the pro and con lists he made about all of the pregnancy pillows he researched, and give her his reasoning behind choosing this one, but he knows it would only bore her.

“Huh, cool.” She says with a shrug. If Bellamy is disappointed by her lackluster reaction, he tries not to let it show.

That night, Clarke tries the pillow for the first time. It sort of cocoons her on both sides, which cuts her off from Bellamy. He spends a few minutes trying to maneuver around the pillow to get his arms around her – he just doesn’t sleep as well without Clarke pulled snug to his body. But the damn pillow is just so _big_ and _fluffy_ that he can’t get around it.

When Clarke drifts off far enough to start snoring, he gives up. She’s sleeping well. That’s what’s important. Bellamy’s restless nights don’t have any effect on the difficulty of Clarke’s labor or potential birth defects. He can deal with it.

Except, two weeks later, Clarke has started dragging the fucking pillow _everywhere_. She’s started to bring it out into the living room during the day so that she can wrap around it on the couch the way that she used to wrap herself around _Bellamy_. One night she even brings it to the dinner table where she wraps it around her torso because “it just takes so much pressure off her back.”

Bellamy should absolutely not be disappointed when her back stops aching, even though it means she no longer comes to him for back rubs in the evening.

He should also absolutely not be jealous of a pillow.

Three weeks after Bellamy introduced Clarke to the pillow, she names it. She names it Bellamy 2.0 – like it does everything Bellamy can, only better. He’s taken to _glaring_ at the thing at night while he tosses and turns, silently resenting the stupid fluffy thing despite how glad he is that Clarke sleeps soundly now.

At some point, the glaring must leave the bed and carry into his daily life because when Clarke is six weeks from her due date, she chucks the pillow onto the living room floor and grabs a chef’s knife from the knife block on the kitchen counter. “Go for it.” She tells Bellamy, motioning for him to grab the knife.

“What?” He asks, dumbfounded.

“I know you hate Bellamy 2.0. Just go ahead and kill him already.” Clarke says with a flick of her hair, like she’s not giving permission for Bellamy to kill what has easily become her best friend.

“Are you serious? You love that pillow.” He’s not sure why he’s protesting. He should really stop talking.

“Yeah, I do love that pillow. But you hate that pillow and I love _you_ more than I love _it_.”

Bellamy purses his lips for a moment before looking between Clarke and the pillow. “You’re not even going to ask why I hate it so much?”

She shrugs. “Doesn’t really matter. I just want you to stop glaring at inanimate objects like you might be able to set them on fire if you try hard enough.”

“But-“ Bellamy starts.

“Just kill the thing already!” Clarke growls and it’s clear that he can’t argue with her now, even if he wanted to.

Bellamy returns the knife to the block before bringing his gaze back to the pillow. “Can I maybe just take it to the dumpster instead? It feels petty to stab a pillow. And also maybe like I might damage our floors.” When Clarke just shrugs, he opts to take it outside immediately.

“Thank God.” Clarke sighs when he returns from throwing it in the dumpster. “It was starting to smell, anyway.”

That night, Bellamy curls himself around his wife for the first time in almost two months. It feels like the first rain after a long drought. He’s torn between sinking into the deep sleep that’s clawing at him and staying awake so that he can continue to enjoy the feel of Clarke – and her significantly larger bump – in his arms.


	28. Check Yes or NO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke presents Bellamy with a list of reasons why it's a good idea to date her.

Clarke storms into his kitchen on a Saturday morning, hair a mess and still in her pajamas. Bellamy can’t help but wonder if she walked all the way here like that. She’s a flurry of determination as she seems to plant her feet on the floor, bracing herself. When she looks at Bellamy, her mouth opens and closes a few times, but nothing comes out. Eventually, she drops her head and says, uncharacteristically quietly, “Bellamy, I want to date you. No, wait, not just like – I’m not talking about a casual thing. I want to be your girlfriend.” 

“You want to be my girlfriend.” Bellamy repeats, voice sounding as confused as he feels.

“Yes, and I think that you should want to date me because, you know, I’m objectively a great choice. I’m finishing med school and I’ll have a good steady job. I’m not exactly connected to my family, which means that you’ll never have to fight me on whose family we should see for holidays. I already love your sister, and I’ve had enough first-hand experience at what your relationship is like, so I’m not going to have to be indoctrinated into the Blake family and you don’t have to worry about me thinking it’s weird. I’m pretty good at cooking, and I’d be happy to cook for you as often as you want – even more than right now. And I’m…well, I’m not sure if I’m really _good_ at this whole girlfriend thing, given past experiences and all, but I think I _could_ be good at it. I think I could be _really_ good at it. You know, for you. I think I could do a lot of things for you.”

Clarke delivers the whole speech to Bellamy’s toes – much as she had the initial blurted proposition.

“You want to date me.” Bellamy repeats, one more time because he just can’t believe that this is really happening.

Clarke’s eyes snap up to his and her brows draw down. “Did I stutter?”

Bellamy thinks of The Office, because how can he not, and tries to hold back a laugh. “Multiple times, actually. It was _adorable_.”

Both of Clarke’s arms draw up to cross over her chest as she pouts. “This isn’t funny, Bellamy. I’m trying…I’m trying to be serious about this.”

“Clarke.” Bellamy says, reaching out a hand to curve over her jaw in an attempt to mollify her. “You are my best friend. In case you weren’t aware, most people don’t just casual friends around the country on a whim. I moved to the _Midwest_ for you, Clarke. I gave up the _ocean_ for you. I gave up living within driving distance of my sister – within driving distance of my nephew, now. If it wasn’t already painfully clear, let me make it a little more obvious: I’m in love with you. Have been since college. You don’t need to give me a list of pros or cons about dating you.”

Bellamy’s hand on her jaw keeps Clarke from hanging her head back toward the ground, but her eyes jump around the room, anywhere but his face. “I just know that you like to be prepared when you make decisions, so I thought it might help if I did some of the preparation for you.”

Just because he can’t resist, Bellamy leans down to brush his lips over the top of Clarke’s head. “Do you not listen to a word I say? I already decided about you, Clarke. You’re it for me. The day I moved here was the day I chose you – there’s been no one else. There’s never going to be anyone else. I don’t need to prepare to make a decision because it’s done.”

Clarke blinks at him a few times, before grinning. “So you want to date me?”

“Clarke, I want to _marry you_ \- some day. For now, I’ll settle for dating, though.”


	29. Un(WAR)ranted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke and Raven start a prank war against Bellamy, Jasper and Monty - it doesn't end well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I write fluff so often that it was time for a little angst...but then it still turned into a little bit of fluff. Oops.

It starts out innocently enough. Clarke and Raven sneak over into the Sigma house and tie Miller and Bellamy’s doorknob to Jasper and Monty’s doorknob with some rope while they’re all sleeping. They were half-drunk when they snuck in and they love the Sigma boys, but they love getting a rise out of them even more. The real shame is that they didn’t stick around to watch their handiwork unfold. The story goes that the boys played tug-o-war trying to get their doors open for twenty minutes before they finally got one of the pledges to untie them.

(They were all late to class that morning.)

That’s probably why they retaliate.

A few days later, Clarke and Raven wind up with blue hair – or mostly, Clarke’s hair is blue and Raven’s is sort of blue-tinged. Dye in their shampoo bottles.

It kind of escalates from there, but it’s all harmless. The girls meticulously cover Bellamy’s car in post-its – since he’s the only one who ever actually _uses_ his car. One of the guys sneak into the sorority house and zip tie down the handles on all of the spray nozzles on every faucet. It results in a lot of drenched girls, but Clarke is the only one of the intended targets that actually gets sprayed, so it’s not a big thing.

As much as Clarke gripes about it to Raven, or tells Bellamy that he’s being _immature_ and he should just let bygones be bygones, it’s actually _fun_ \- this prank war they’ve got going on between the houses.

It’s not until the caricature shows up in the lobby of the main Business building that she starts thinking it might not have just been fun and games. She doesn’t even _have_ business classes. It’s _Finn_ of all people who tells her about it. (“Hey, Clarke, I know we’re not exactly on speaking terms, but there’s this picture of you in McMann that I thought you’d want to know about. I tried to get it down but it’s in one of those glass case and I still can’t pick locks. So, anyway, yeah. Sorry.” The voicemail had said.)

She stops dead in her tracks when she sees it. It’s a terrible caricature of her – she wouldn’t have even known it was supposed to be her except for the fact that CLARKE GRIFFIN is written in big, blocky letters at the top of the page. She’s pouting and there’s a big speech bubble coming from her mouth that reads: “Wah, wah, I killed my father and now I’m going to bitch about it to make you feel sorry for me.”

The only thing that stops the tears from falling from her eyes is the fact that there are thirty people standing around pointing at her and she’s not willing to give them the satisfaction. Lucky for her, even though Finn doesn’t know how to pick locks, _she_ does. She pulls a bobby pin from her hair and snaps it in half, popping the pathetic trophy case lock in a matter of seconds. She calmly tears down the picture and walks out of the building without looking back.

She kicks in the Sigma door with more force than is strictly necessary. Her footsteps echo through the house as she stomps up to Bellamy’s door. It could’ve been any of them, she supposes, but _he’s_ the president, which means that this went through him no matter what. And _that’s_ the issue here.

He’s sitting on his bed in his boxers, glasses on and reading a book when she kicks his door in. (The moment she walks inside she feels some of her anger deflate.) “Who put a bee in your bonnet this morning?” He asks without looking up.

Clarke picks up the closest object to her and throws it square at his head. (Shocker, it’s another book.)

He winces, hand coming up to rub at his head immediately. “Jesus, Clarke. What’s your problem?”

“My problem?” Clarke snarls, slapping the caricature against his chest with enough force for the slap to ring through the room. “What the fuck is _your_ problem, Blake? I thought this whole prank war was all fun and games. I duct-taped a harmonica to the grill of your car and you thought that _this_ was the logical next step in retaliation?”

Bellamy looks down at the paper in his lap and, after a moment, throws it from his lap like it’s a snake. “Clarke, I –“

“I don’t want to hear it, Blake. I thought we were friends, I thought…I really – I don’t know, I thought you _cared_ about me or something, but I guess I was wrong.” Clarke shrugs, resigned, eyes glued to the floor. All of the rage she was feeling on her way across campus has seeped out of her body, leaving her just…sad. 

Clarke doesn’t particularly care what anyone who saw the drawing might think of her. It’s not that. It’s that after three years – six months of bickering, another six months of slowly coming to terms with how to speak to each other without yelling, and then two years of drifting closer and closer together until Clarke found herself at _Bellamy’s_ doorstep two months ago on the fifth anniversary of her father’s death – she’s blindsided that he would do something like this.

She doesn’t hurry out of the room. She doesn’t particularly have the energy to hurry. Instead, she slinks, her body feeling ten times heavier than it really is. She doesn’t even look up to see his reaction before she leaves.

______________________________________________________________

A week goes by in radio silence from _all_ Sigmas. It’s like the house is on lock down. Wick even cancels on the date he had planned with Raven. By the end of the week, Clarke has convinced herself that she’s mostly over what she’s been referring to as the Great Blake Betrayal of 2016.

She and Raven have commandeered the den for Friday evening and are half-way through the first Magic Mike when Fox shuffles in. “Clarke, there’s someone here to see you.” There’s tension in every line of her body.

Clarke sighs, doesn’t even have to think hard to get a pretty good idea of who’s waiting in the foyer. “Send him in.” It has to be a Sigma. (The only other person who could _possibly_ get Fox that tense would be Finn, but he’d never have the gall to step into a place with both Clarke and Raven present.)

It turns out to be a two-for-one. Bellamy literally drags Murphy into the den by his ear and all but _throws him_ at Clarke. “Say what you have to say.” Bellamy instructs, voice low and serious, every bit the 

“I was the one who put the picture in McMann.” Murphy admits, looking entirely unapologetic. “The rest of the guys weren’t involved in it, but I’m not going to apologize or anything, so don’t expect anything else.”

And. Well. _Oh._

Beside Clarke, Raven snorts. “Of course not, because you’re an asshole.”

Murphy glares at her. “Feel free to be pissed at me all you want. I don’t really care.” Behind him, Bellamy clears his throat. “But you shouldn’t be pissed at anyone else.” Murphy adds begrudgingly.

Bellamy drags him back into the doorway by his collar, hissing a gruff, “Go home, Murphy.” When it becomes clear that Bellamy’s not leaving with Murphy, Raven gets up from the couch and excuses herself to the kitchen under the pretense of getting more popcorn. Clarke keeps her eyes stubbornly glued to the screen where Channing Tatum violently grinds on the floor.

“I’m not going to lie, Princess, a few days ago I had this big speech planned. I was going to figure out whoever actually made that thing and then I was going to chew you out for ever thinking that I would do something like that to you. I was ready to drag you on the world’s biggest guilt trip for it, actually – you were going to be groveling by the end of it. But, I haven’t seen you in a week – haven’t even talked to you – and I haven’t gone this long without talking to you pretty much since the day we met. Even when we weren’t friends we still _talked_. So now that you’re in front of me, I think I missed you too much to yell at you and risk going longer without you.”

Clarke swallows against the lump rising in her throat. He might not have dragged her along on the guilt trip of the century, but she still _feels_ guilty. “I’m sorry, Bell.” She says, voice smaller than she’d like.

He shrugs and sidles up next to her on the couch, arm resting easily across her shoulders like they haven’t been fighting all week. “Change the movie to literally anything else and I’ll forgive you.”

Clarke puts on Percy Jackson instead, because she knows that Bellamy hates it in that way that he _loves_ to hate it. He complains the whole time, but Clarke gets to curl into him and listen to each argument as it rumbles though his chest. This whole cuddling thing is new for them, but Bellamy was right – not speaking for a week really did make her miss him more than she had realized. Being tactile is definitely just a response to the week spent apart.

Raven never does come back from getting more popcorn and Clarke and Bellamy wake up on Saturday morning the same way they fell asleep - tangled together on the couch. No one’s really surprised by either of those things.


	30. I Didn't Do It!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Octavia creates a convoluted scheme to set up Clarke and Bellamy.

“OCTAVIA!” Bellamy bellows, storming into the house late one Saturday, uncaring as to whether or not he’s waking her up. Actually, he _hopes_ he’s waking her up. It would serve her right.

“I didn’t do it!” She yells back sleepily, the tell-tale rustling from her sheets letting Bellamy know that she’s frantically pulling herself out of bed.

Bellamy crosses his arms over his chest, mouth screwing into a scowl, eyebrows drawing down. He is the picture of “disgruntled parental unit.” Octavia jumps a little when she sees him, so he knows that he’s at least mastered this part of “legal guardian” in the last few years. “Do you even know what I’m mad about?” He asks, voice gruff and eyes narrowed.

Octavia scrutinizes him carefully. “The…scratch on your truck?”

“YOU DID WHAT?!” Bellamy growls.

“Ha! Gotcha.” Octavia is grinning at him, entirely too smug for someone who’s just been dragged out of bed at midnight on a Saturday to get yelled at. “Sometimes mom used to do that to see what she could get me to confess to. I didn’t scratch your car, you idiot, I was just testing you. Whatever it is that’s got your panties in a twist, I didn’t do it. I haven’t been doing much of anything lately besides school.”

“So you didn’t spend all week telling your friend Clarke Griffin what a great mechanic your big brother is?”

At least Octavia has the good sense to look sheepish. “Oh that? Yeah, I might’ve done that. What of it? You are a good mechanic.”

Bellamy glares at her. “And then surely you didn’t put a whistle in her exhaust pipe to make her think something was wrong with her car?”

“Oh. Well, okay, maybe I’ve been doing a little more than just school lately.” She admits with an unapologetic shrug.

Bellamy raises an eyebrow and purses his lips. “And did you disconnect her car battery today while you were on campus?”

“She’s cute, Bell!” Octavia protests before turning to throw herself back into her bed.

“I’m taking your non-answer as an admission of guilt. But for starters, she’s five years younger than I am. More than that, if you really wanted to set me up with your friend, there are far more normal ways than trashing her car. For example, you might say, ‘Hey Bellamy, my friend Clarke is really cute, you should ask her out.’”

“I could’ve, but you never would’ve listened to me.” Octavia half-mumbles into her pillow.

“Property damage, O! She called the shop after school today in _tears_ about her _dad’s car_ breaking down.”

“But it’s not _actually_ broken down. And I didn’t _actually_ damage any property. Besides, you should’ve been able to fix it in less than five minutes. No harm, no foul _and_ you got to be her knight in shining armor!”

“Octavia, you’re missing the point!”

“Wait a second.” Octavia perks up and grins at him. “It’s after midnight. Clarke’s last class ended at 2:30 and her car wouldn’t have even started. She should’ve called you hours ago. Why are you just getting home now?”

Bellamy opens his mouth to respond and then quickly clamps it shut.

“It worked, didn’t it? You’ve been with Clarke all day!”

“Missing the point still, O.”

“No, you are. The point is that Clarke is perfect for you and you just spent the last ten hours falling in love with her. Now, in the morning I expect bacon and pancakes to make up for the fact that you so rudely woke me up to yell at me for finding you the perfect girlfriend – which, for the record, is not a valid reason to yell at your sister. Then for lunch I want tacos as a thank you.” With that, she pulls her blankets over her head, clearly finished with the conversation.

In the morning, there is no bacon and Bellamy refuses to make pancakes. He still stands by the fact that Octavia was in the wrong for messing with Clarke’s car and deserved to be woken up last night. He might go to the food truck around the corner and get tacos for lunch, though, because five-year age difference or not, Clarke really is perfect for him and maybe he does owe Octavia a thank you for that.


	31. The Toaster (WICKEN!)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "How the hell did you manage to get your foot stuck in a toaster?" "Honestly, very carefully."

It’s not like Raven _planned_ on hopping over to Wick’s dorm at 3 am. This isn’t what she _set out_ to do tonight. But, well, regardless – here she is.

Wick was clearly asleep before she knocked on his door. When he answers, he’s in low-slung sweatpants and a threadbare t-shirt, his hair a mess on his head and one eye is cracked open at her, the other squinted shut. “Raven?”

“I’m not exactly happy about asking, but I think I need your help.” Raven braces one arm on the doorframe to keep her balance and raises her other foot high in the air.

It takes Wick a minute – a long minute, actually – to take in the scene. It’s clear that one eye isn’t giving him the whole picture, so he works hard to adjust himself to the light of the hallway and get them both open before he starts gaping. “How the hell did you manage to get your foot stuck in a toaster?”

Raven huffs a laugh because, sure, valid question. “Honestly? Very carefully.”

“Jesus.” Wick breathes. If the word “exasperated” ever applied, it’s now. “Come on, let’s get you free of that thing.” Raven’s heart absolutely does _not_ flutter in her chest when he bends down and scoops her into his arms with ease.

In theory, they could probably just break the toaster open to get Raven free, but that might run the risk of Raven’s foot getting caught in the crossfire. Instead, Wick sits her down on his bed and props her toaster-foot up on a chair. He grabs his toolbox and starts tinkering on the outer cover.

When the outer cover is off and Wick starts to disassemble the inner coils her asks, “So really, how’d you get your foot stuck?”

Raven sighs and lets herself collapse onto his bed. “The stupid thing would only toast on _one_ side. What good is half-toasted toast? So I figured I’d open it up and fix it – which, I’m pretty sure I did. But then when I was putting it back together I needed a third hand and, as a human, I only happen to have two of those – so I used my foot. But by the time I thought it was okay to stop bracing the inner wall and I tried to take my foot out, it was already stuck.”

Wick looks up from where he’s tinkering and grins at her. At least he’s smart enough not to say anything.


	32. But You Cantaloupe!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy overhears Octavia's half of a phone conversation with Lincoln and jumps to conclusions.

Bellamy never should have heard it.

He was supposed to work the late shift at the bar, but then Murphy had called in begging for an extra shift and Bellamy’s pretty sure he’s getting a stomach bug, so he gave it up. If he had stayed at work, he never would’ve come home at an hour like this. And then he never would’ve heard it.

“No, Lincoln we…can’t elope. Yeah, no, I’m with you. Bell will kill me, though, but whatever – he can deal with it.”

Octavia. On the phone. Whispering. To her boyfriend. About eloping.

(He’s so blindsided by all of it – any talk of marriage at all, considering they’ve only been dating for three months – that he doesn’t stop to appreciate that she was warning him _against_ eloping.)

Bellamy spends three days stewing about it. After Octavia had hung up, he’d clanged around a bit in the kitchen so she would know he’d returned and then chickened out of confronting her. He was too afraid to say anything, worried that he’d say the _wrong_ thing and end up pushing her right into Lincoln’s apparently willing arms.

But after three days of simmering, once he’s decided to confront Octavia, he can’t hold it in anymore. She’s just setting down her car keys on the counter when he bursts in and blurts, “You can’t marry Lincoln now!”

To her credit, Octavia calmly sets her keys down and then turns on Bellamy with nothing more than a shrug. “Good to know how you feel, big brother.” 

Bellamy shakes his head, determined to get to the other side of this conversation. “I mean it, Octavia. You’re way too young to get married still and you’ve only been dating for a few months. And don’t even get me started on eloping. When you get married – a very, very long time from now – you are damn well going to do it where I can attempt to physically intimidate Lincoln _in person_ while you say your vows. Got it?”

“Again, good to know how you feel, Bell. If I ever get the urge to run away and get married without telling you, I’ll be sure to invite you along or something. Any particular reason you’re up in arms about marriage today?”

Bellamy blinks at her before ducking his head. “Friday on the phone. I traded shifts with Murphy and I got home early and I heard you talking to Lincoln. You told him you couldn’t elope. I support the refusal, but I was just worried that it had come up at all and I thought I should make myself clear.”

Octavia’s brows draw down and her eyes go foggy as she searches her memory. It takes her a moment, but when her face lights up in recognition she laughs hard enough that she cries and complains that it actually _hurts_.

It lasts _fifteen minutes_.

Finally, she picks herself up from where she’s crouched on the floor and wraps Bellamy in a bear hug. “I swear to God you are the biggest idiot to ever walk the planet, but I love you anyway.”

Because here’s what was happening on _both_ ends of that phone call:

_“So I was thinking that we could cook for your brother next weekend – maybe brunch? I should probably try to start charming him, right? No one can resist my charm.”_

_“No, Lincoln we…” don’t have to do that, Octavia wants to say, but Lincoln cuts her off._

_“Honeydew or cantaloupe to serve with brunch?”_

_“Cantaloupe.” She replies immediately. Honeydew always makes her tongue feel fuzzy._

_Lincoln hums. “Doesn’t your brother hate cantaloupe?”_

_“Yeah.”_

_“So should I get honeydew instead?’_

_“No, I’m with you. Bell will kill me, though, but whatever – he can deal with it.”_


	33. Droolius Caesar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke brings home a rescue dog and Bellamy vows to _hate_ him.

“Look at him! Look how fluffy he is!” Clarke is all-but throwing the fur-ball in Bellamy’s face. “His name is going to be Caesar because he’s going to be the king of his domain. Isn’t that right Caesar?”

Apparently saying no one hundred times was not a sufficient enough deterrent to stop Clarke from bringing home the goddamn puppy. He even said it in _eight_ different languages. (Maybe that was the problem? Maybe she didn’t understand him.)

“He’s going to look real fluffy when he’s going right back where he came from.” Bellamy grumbles as he throws his briefcase onto the table. He has 42 essays that he’s supposed to grade by tomorrow. He has absolutely no time for a puppy.

Clarke holds the puppy in front of her face and starts wiggling its paws and talking in a squeaky voice. “Please Bellamy, let me stay. I’m going to be a real good boy!”

“Clarke!” He growls.

“Come on, Bell, have a heart. He’s a rescue from the pound. If I bring him back, they’re going to put him down. Do you really want them to put him down?”

Bellamy keeps his eyes off of the fluff-ball and pulls out his papers and a pen. “I have no feelings about that thing. So I have no opinion on the matter.”

“I’ll do everything. I’ll feed him myself and walk him and train him.” Clarke pleads. “All you need to do is love on him sometimes. He’s never going to be comfortable here if he thinks his daddy hates him.”

Bellamy snorts. “You sound like Octavia did when she was twelve. For the record, I’m not that thing’s daddy.”

“Bell, I read all these articles about why it’s great to have a puppy in the house. There are all kinds of benefits like stress reduction and longer lifespans. Do you want me to tell you all about them? Will that convince you to let him stay?”

“If I just say yes will you let me work?”

Clarke doesn’t respond, just bends down to kiss his forehead before trouncing off with the dog. Her dog. Their dog, apparently. Caesar. Begrudgingly, Bellamy will admit that the name is exactly what he would’ve picked and maybe the fur-ball won’t be _too_ terrible to have around.

He’s absolutely making Clarke keep her promise about doing all the work, though.

It takes less than two weeks for Caesar to get Bellamy wrapped around his finger. Clarke even starts to get _jealous_ because Caesar always jumps up into _Bellamy’s_ lap when they’re sitting on the couch. When they come home at night, it’s always Bellamy that Caesar runs to first before greeting Clarke. On one particularly memorable occasion, Clarke offered him bacon from the stove and he ignored it because Bellamy had just walked out of the bedroom.

She might be more peeved if it weren’t do damn cute.


	34. About Last Night...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke wakes up naked in Miller's bed and can't seem to remember the night before...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all, so in going through some of my old files I found this gem sitting at the bottom of my one-shot document. I'm not sure I love it, but I thought I owed it to you since I totally failed at the second half of this challenge. I'm closing this fic (at least for now...) because, as you might've guessed, I lost my Bellarke inspiration in the spring. Don't worry. It might come back some day. :)
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me!

It’s rare that Clarke drinks enough to black out, so waking up in the morning, not knowing how she got into whatever bed she’s laying in is disorienting to say the least. As soon as she comes to her senses enough to recognize that the bed she’s in is decidedly _not_ hers – or even Octavia’s – she takes stock of the fact that she’s naked.

Which, alright, it’d probably be more surprising to wake up fully clothed in a strangers bed, but knowing that she hooked up with someone last night and doesn’t even know _who_ is still a shock.

If she thinks hard enough, she vaguely recalls calling for a round of tequila shots at the bar and, yeah, that’s a pretty surefire way to wipe her memory. But then she also remembers that _Bellamy_ was at the bar last night and it’s not exactly like she’s been carrying a torch for her roommate’s brother for the last six months, but it’s a near thing. At the very least, she’s been fantasizing about him since the day she met him. She’s even grown fond of him – fighting for control of the remote on movie nights and bickering with him senselessly about _anything_. If Bellamy were to mention that the sky is blue, she might try to tell him it was red just to get a rise out of him.

So to recap, Clarke apparently blacked out and went home with someone who was _not_ Bellamy. It’s almost impossible for her to believe, but Clarke has been in Bellamy’s bedroom dozens of times and this array of deep greens is decidedly different than Bellamy’s bland arrangement of various shades of tan.

Clarke has already slipped back into her tank top from the night before and is in the process of working her second leg into her skinny jeans when the door pops open.

“ _Miller_?!” Clarke squeals and promptly falls over. On the bright side, having her face buried in the floor boards means that it’s harder to see her skin turning bright red.

What’s worse than drunkenly taking a guy home in front of the guy you kind of like? _Taking his roommate home._ To – when Clarke feels brave enough to peek past Miller’s leg and into the living area to confirm - _his apartment_.

“Shit! Shit! Fuck! Shit!” Clarke scrambles back to her feet and pulls her jeans on as quickly as possible. Miller just stands in the doorway smirking the whole time. “Listen, look, I’m sorry. Last night was amazing, really.” When Miller just quirks an eyebrow, Clarke plows forward until he flattens himself against one side of the doorframe to let her by. “Could we just, uh, not tell Bellamy about this?”

“Not tell Bellamy.” Miller repeats.

If it were even possible, Clarke feels her cheeks flame brighter. “Yeah, I mean, it just might be weird for him to know. Since you guys live together and all. And we’re all friends. You know.”

“Right. Sure.” Miller doesn’t exactly project emotion on the average day, but his blankness gives Clarke pause. She figures it was just a one night stand, but maybe there were some real feelings on Miller’s part? Is she hurting him, here?

“Maybe we can talk about it some other time?” Clarke lifts her shoulders in what she hopes comes off as an apology. She doesn’t even bother to button her jeans once she has them on, just slips into her sandals and makes to leave. She pauses for a moment at Miller’s frozen form in the doorway and leans in to kiss him – she doesn’t really _feel_ like kissing Miller, but it seems like the right thing to do.

It’s probably because of the pounding hangover that she doesn’t hear the door open and close in that time.

“Does one of you want to give me an explanation?” Bellamy’s voice floats through the open apartment, amused more than anything else.

Clarke can’t help but look down at the floorboards, wondering if her wish will come true and they will actually swallow her up right now. (No such luck.) With that option gone, she just stares at Bellamy, at a loss for another explanation.

“Pretty sure your girl thinks she had sex with _me_ last night instead of you.” Miller chimes in. “Now might be a good time for me to remind you that your bedroom is _that one_.” Miller throws an exasperated nod toward Bellamy’s door, catty-corner to his own, then turns to meet Clarke’s eyes. “And now might be a good time for me to remind you that I already have a boyfriend and I’m not the one who’s been making googly eyes at you for the last six months.”


	35. Disney Princess Bellamy Blake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Octavia has insisted that Bellamy is secretly a Disney Princess for as long as he can remember, but it wasn't until now that he actually started thinking she might be right.

It had been a running joke for years. When she was a kid, as soon as she’d seen her first cliché princess movie Octavia could never get enough of playing princess. The thing was, though, that she always wanted to be the prince – the knight in shining armor who came and made the princess swoon – and consistently relegated Bellamy to playing the role of said swooning princess. And really, there wasn’t much that Bellamy would deny her, so he always obliged.

Eventually, as Octavia grew up, they stopped playing princess, but it still came up once in a while. When they were kids, Bellamy had a bird feeder outside his window. When he grew up and took on other responsibilities, he stopped remembering to fill it up as often. Of course, that didn’t stop a symphony of bird songs from ringing through his window every once in a while from the ones who refused to forget him. Octavia always took the opportunity to ask him if the birds would be helping him get dressed.

At his high school graduation, a butterfly landed on Bellamy’s cap as he was receiving his diploma. Octavia’s obnoxious “ _Disney Princess!_ ” was ten times louder than the polite golf clap of the rest of the crowd.

Starting college brought with it new friends who didn’t know that things like _relationships_ were a taboo topic in the Blake household. The night Miller found out that Bellamy just plain didn’t date, he spent five solid minutes staring at Bellamy like he was trying to find a third eye poking out from somewhere. When he left, Octavia clapped Bellamy on the back and said, “Don’t worry, big bro, some day your prince will come.”

It’s not like it was something that was always on Bellamy’s mind. He often managed to forget his sister’s insistence that he was princess until the next time she wanted to exploit it to get a rise out of him. But this? This is too much, even for him.

It’s sunny out, is the first thing he thinks when his eyes blink open. It’s sunny out and he’s got his head pillowed in the lap of some beautiful girl who he’s definitely never seen before – because you don’t forget a face like hers. “You okay there?” She asks, failing to hide the grin on her face.

Bellamy sits up and the world flips upside down. “What happened?” He groans, hand coming up to rub at his forehead.

“You don’t remember?” She quirks an eyebrow at him.

And if he thinks about it, he _does_ remember. He’d been on his way to his car, dead on his feet after a night shift and four straight classes. He heard a whistling and only had a moment to blink before being blindsided by a football. It’d sent him stumbling backwards, almost tripping over a curb, only to be steadied by sure hands with a gentle touch. _Her_ hands, he thinks.

Bellamy recalls this girl keeping one arm around his waist to help him stay upright while she winged the football back at the jock who had originally thrown it, hitting him right in the balls. Bellamy had only a moment to chuckle before the ensuing dizziness caught up with him and he went down. Right into her lap, apparently.

“I tried to, you know, save as much of your dignity as I could.” The blonde offers with a light chuckle.

‘Gee, thanks.” Bellamy snorts.

“So, does this happen to you a lot?”

His face screws up into a grimace. “Getting hit in the face by random flying projectiles?”

“I meant the whole getting rescued and then directing all of your seething _appreciation_ toward your gracious knight in shining armor?”

He groans, then, bringing his hand up to his head for an entirely different reason. “I’ve been told that I’m kind of an ass. I’m sorry, let me make it up to you.”

She frowns, considering, “What do you have in mind?”

He takes her to dinner the next night, finds out that her name is Clarke and she is nearly his antithesis in the best possible way. He tells her that he doesn’t, in fact, make a habit of getting rescued by beautiful women and subsequently insulting them and she assures him that she does, in fact, make a habit of coming to the rescue of ungrateful freckled buffoons.

Afterward, Bellamy asks if he can take her on a second date under the promise that they _never_ tell his sister how they met for fear that he will never live it down as long as he lives.


	36. You Jump, I Jump Jack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke and Bellamy find themselves staring down the barrel of a 30-foot cliff jump, but only one of them looks scared.

Barefoot. Wearing a thong and one of Bellamy’s t-shirts. Staring down a thirty foot drop straight into the ocean. It’s not _exactly_ how Clarke pictured spending her Friday night.

An hour ago she was sleeping soundly in Bellamy’s bed, content to wait out the weekend at the Blake’s apartment rather than live through another awkward weekend at home with Marcus in town.

She wasn’t exactly expecting the three guys who busted down Bellamy’s door and threw a sack over her head before she could even wake up. Clarke had fought like mad initially, throwing her limbs around clumsily trying to wriggle her way out of the arms of her apparent kidnappers. She’d only gone still when she’d heard Miller’s voice saying, “Well, shit, that’s not Bellamy.”

Bellamy’s voice pulls her back to the present moment. “You know they came for me, not you, right?” He asks, voice slightly smug as her surveys her in the moonlight.

“Yeah, and?”

“And you don’t have to do this.” He nods toward the drop in front of the both of them. “It’s not like they’re going to let you in.”

Into the secret society, that is. _The Guard._ In the last hour she’s gathered that it’s some sort of a cross between a cult and a frat that runs through Bellamy’s University – the very same one that Clarke and Octavia are starting at in a month. Apparently they’ve been running Bellamy through tests for weeks now and this is supposed to be the final one – make the jump and you’re in. And now, by virtue of the fact that she was asleep in Bellamy’s bed, Clarke’s facing the same task.

“I don’t know, Bell, I think they just might.”

Bellamy snorts briefly before his gaze goes back to the drop before them. His throat visibly constricts as he gulps. “What makes you say that?”

Clarke gives him a look from head to toe. “Because right now they’re thinking only one of us is scared.”

And just because she knows it’ll make that little crease appear between Bellamy’s eyebrows – the one he only gets when he’s seriously annoyed – she leaps.

(Turns out that The Guard _can’t_ let Clarke in, even though they want to, since she’s not technically a student yet. But the good news is that Bellamy’s knee jerk reaction has _always_ been to protect Clarke. The moment she was in the air he couldn’t help but follow.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my quest to continue to violently ignore the majority of Season 3, I found myself going back to Season 1 and I just really loved this line. :)


	37. Superstition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy and Clarke become inadvertently supernaturally linked.

“You _dared her_?!” Part of Clarke wants to reach out and slap Bellamy, ask him just how thick he is, but a much larger part of her is surprisingly unsurprised by this turn of events. Mostly, she just sighs at him and shakes her head.

Bellamy winces as though the first part of her had actually won out. “Witches don’t exist, Clarke!”

Clarke narrows her eyes and huffs, turning on her heel and jogging away. She makes it about thirty feet before she starts looking like she’s trudging through molasses. In another ten feet, she just freezes, retching for a moment before reluctantly turning back and making the return journey. “Clearly they do!” She throws her arm wide in the direction of her previous path as evidence.

Bellamy’s lips thin and his fingers twitch at his side. “Well I didn’t know that an hour ago.”

“Yeah, well, ‘I didn’t know’ doesn’t change the fact that I literally cannot make myself move more than forty feet away from you without feeling like I’m dying. What’s going to happen if someone moves me further, huh, Bell?”

“If she wanted us dead, why didn’t she just kill us?” He wonders aloud, trying his best to ignore the seething anger that Clarke’s throwing his way. “If she can do this, then clearly she could’ve thrown a fireball at me or something.”

“Well you didn’t dare her to throw a fireball at you!”

Bellamy huffs and runs a hand through his hair. “I didn’t dare her to, I don’t know, magically link us or whatever this is either. She just told me that she was a witch. And then after we argued I told her to prove it! You can’t tell me that if someone told you they could use magic you wouldn’t ask for proof.”

Clarke just glares some more.

“Look, it’s not that big of a deal. Think about it. It’s not like we’re usually more than a few yards apart anyway. Camp isn’t _that_ big and I can’t remember the last time that I left camp without you.”

“So you think we should just, what? Live with this?”

Bellamy shrugs.

Clarke’s eyes are narrowed, but burning when she says, “Fine, but I’ll tell you what. I’ve got things to do, Bellamy. If I need to go to the med bay, then I’m going to the med bay. If I need to go get more supplies, then I’m going to get more supplies. If I want to take a nap in the middle of the day, then I’m going to take a nap in the middle of the day. No matter what you say, this is definitely _your_ fault, so you’re just going to have to follow me around.”

She doesn’t wait for his agreement before storming off back to camp. Bellamy dutifully follows, tagging along like Clarke’s got him on a leash. Which, to be fair, she kind of does.

It works out just fine for a few weeks. Clarke lives her life and Bellamy follows. He doesn’t mind delegating where he needs to and Miller is more than happy to take up some slack in coordinating hunting missions. In fact, once they adjust to the new routine, both Bellamy _and_ feel some relief at always knowing where the other is. It’s nice to know that your partner isn’t out making some stupid self-sacrificing decision or rash attack on a perceived enemy.

Somewhere around Day 20, the game changes.

Clarke used to be just fine in the drop ship, tending to whatever injuries came stumbling in, while Bellamy practiced with his new arsenal of Earth weapons – spears, the hatchet, daggers, whatever else he can make with their limited supplies -- just outside the wall. In the middle of wrapping Monroe’s twisted ankle, she cries out in pain as her vision goes spotty. Her hands shake uncontrollably and her ears ring and throb like she’s just been hit upside the head.

She drops the cloth and stumbles blindly, moving on pure instinct. She finds herself pressed flat against one of the large spikes in wall behind the drop ship, hands reaching until she makes purchase with skin. It doesn’t take her more than a few seconds to register that it’s _Bellamy_ she’s found. Clarke’s got one hand on his should and another clutching at one of his hands, his other rests on the side of her neck.

They stand there, immobile for a few minutes until Clarke’s vision returns to normal and she can breathe through the pain again.

“That’s new.” Bellamy observes, blinking at her through the wooden spikes. “Maybe it was a fluke.” The suggestion doesn’t even sound reasonable, but Bellamy confirms it when he takes a few steps back and Clarke doubles over in pain again.

It literally only stops when they touch, which is awkward.

It gets even more awkward when Bellamy calls for Miller to carry Clarke out beyond the wall. Trying to find each other blind on one side or the other probably wouldn’t have gone well, but Clarke still feels degraded by it.

“Where the fuck does this witch live?” Clarke grumbles through gritted teeth, one hand pressing against Bellamy’s arm once Miller puts her down.

“By the boundary river. Come on. We can make it there and back by nightfall.” Bellamy tells her, sliding her hand down so that it’s clasped in his own. He gives Miller a brief nod to acknowledge the fact that he’s just listed to their conversation and knows that they’re leaving before they take off.

 __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

The witch is, unsurprisingly, incredibly unhelpful.

She looks like any other grounder. Clarke feels oddly disappointed by it, like maybe she was expecting her to wear a pointy hat or something. The only strange thing about her is that she smirks at them as they approach like she not only knew they were coming, but knows exactly what they’re doing here.

“So this is your other half?” She asks, eyebrows rising.

“Apologize Bellamy.” Clarke grumbles, ignoring the witch’s question. Holding hands through a three-hour hike is less than pleasant. It was harder to keep her balance over the uneven terrain with only one hand to steady herself and her palm is sweaty and sticky against Bellamy’s.

“For what?”

“For whatever you did to make this happen.”

Bellamy sighs, head drooping, though he doesn’t argue. “I’m sorry that I didn’t believe in your magical powers.”

“Can you fix us, please?” Clarke chimes in.

The witch surveys them for a moment, fingers tapping along her jaw as she looks them over. “That’s not what got you into this situation, little Skaikru leader, but no, I cannot fix you even if I wanted to. Only you can do that.”

Clarke throws her hand – just the singular hand – into the air in frustration. Her patience has grown too thin. She was able to get things done with Bellamy a few dozen feet away. Her ability to keep the other kids healthy is severely crippled by the loss of one hand to Bellamy’s skin. “How are we supposed to do that?”

“That is for you to figure out. Hopefully you figure it out soon, though, because it will only get worse from here.”

“Worse?” Clarke repeats, she sees Bellamy’s jaw drop out of the corner of her eye. “How could it get worse than this?”

And she really shouldn’t have asked.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It happens in the middle of the night. Clarke and Bellamy have taken to sleeping in Bellamy’s tent, arms outstretched with their hands clasped between them, but at least they can keep a buffer distance of a few feet between themselves. They wake up simultaneously, each pulling in greedy breaths without feeling the satisfaction of air in the lungs. It’s Bellamy who acts, tugging on Clarke’s hand hard enough that she’s shocked her shoulder doesn’t dislocate. It does have the desired effect, however. She tumbles across the gap between them and falls almost _on top_ of Bellamy.

As soon as they’re plastered against each other from shoulder to shin, their lungs inflate.

“No. No! I can’t do this!” Clarke hisses in the darkness. She makes an effort to push herself off of Bellamy, but one of his arms comes up to band around her waist, holding her firmly to his body.

“Would you really rather find out if both of us will die than lay with me?”

“I guess I’d rather both of us die than live the rest of our short lives laying here on the ground because we’re too scared to see what happens if we don’t. We’re no good to the rest of the camp like this.”

“The witch said that we could fix this ourselves. It’s like a puzzle. Didn’t you play chess on the Ark? You’re a good problem-solver. We can figure this out and then we can go back to our lives.”

Clarke relaxes minutely, giving in to the cramp forming in her neck and letting her head rest on Bellamy’s chest. “That makes sense.”

She hears the dull thud that indicates Bellamy’s put his head back down as well. “What purpose has this served?”

“We’ve had to be closer to each other.”

“No.” Bellamy’s chin brushes over the top of Clarke’s head as he shakes his head. “What has it actually made happen? What has it changed for either of us?”

It takes them twenty minutes to dance around the issue. It’s not until Clarke feels Bellamy’s fingertips idly stroking against her back that she feels brave enough to admit that, aside from the inconveniences that have come along with physically not being able to let go of each other, she’s actually _enjoyed_ being near Bellamy.

As soon as she admits it, Bellamy’s lips crash into hers in a clumsy, impulsive kiss. Clarke pulls back to look at him for a moment, make sure that he hasn’t miraculously tripped while laying down and managed to fall onto her lips or anything. When she finds him staring back at her intently, she leans back down. The second kiss is much gentler than the first, a mere brush of lips before pressing deeper.

They’re so busy going back for a third kiss – and then a fourth, and a fifth, a sixth, a seventh, before they lose count – that it’s not until morning that Clarke realizes she’s able to climb off of Bellamy with no ill effects. When they feel braver, they test the connection at complete opposite sides of camp and find that their invisible leash has suddenly disappeared.

Later, much later, Bellamy will realize that he _might’ve_ been grumbling to himself about how would never see him as anything more than a brutal enforcer, no matter what forgiveness she might pretend to offer him, right before he ran into the witch. He can’t say that he’ll ever approve of the means, but he can’t deny that he’s happy with the results.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And a bonus! TWO chapters in one day after not updating for a month!? What!!
> 
> I've got probably 5 or 6 sort of partially finished one shots sitting on my computer. This was one of them and, given that it's Halloween season, it felt like the perfect time to finish it up! Also, I feel like I could write a full 20,000 word fic about supernaturally linked Bellark if the compulsion ever strikes. 1800 just doesn't do it justice.


	38. Texts From Last Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy: I find it simply astounding that you spelled “drunken” wrong, but managed to spell pterodactyl right.

Once a month Octavia forces Clarke out by herself for girl’s night. Every month, Clarke vehemently protests not only going out without Bellamy, but going out in general. Since they moved in together last year, Clarke has become was Octavia calls a "nester." Octavia has literally pushed her out the front door on more than one occasion, but every time she comes home she can't stop giggling and eventually admits that she's glad she went..

Every month, Bellamy waits home on the couch for his girlfriend to come home. More often than not, she has such a _great time_ that she needs his help to get home and get into bed. Mostly she just needs a hand so that she doesn't collapse face-first into the coffee table, but occasionally she even needs his help to pull back her hair while she heaves over the toilet.

**Clarke: THRES A GUY AT THE BAR MKING DRUNKIN PTRODACYL SHRIEK SOUNDS!!!!**

**Bellamy: Is the guy drunk? Or is he imitating a pterodactyl who is drunk?**

**Clarke: DRNKIN PTERODACTYL SHRIEK SOUNDS BABE**

**Bellamy: I find it simply astounding that you spelled “drunken” wrong, but managed to spell pterodactyl right.**

**Clarke: DUH. DINOSURS ARE IMPOTANT.**

**Clarke: MY BOYFRIEND IS A HISTORY PROFESSOR**

**Bellamy: Thanks for reminding me.**

(He’s not even going to touch the fact that even the most ancient of Greek history is still millions of years too modern for dinosaurs.)

**Bellamy: Still not sure who was drunk.**

**Clarke: PROBBLY ME**

**Bellamy: No! Are you sure?**

**Clarke: DRNKER THAN THAT TIME I TRED T USE YUR DCK FOR KAROKE. THT WAS FYN. WE SHLD DO THAT TONIGJT**

**Octavia: This is the GROUP CHAT you fuckers.**

**Octavia: I’m taking Clarke’s phone away until we get home.**

After a long pause, during which Bellamy just stares at his phone and tries to decide whether or not he should be embarrassed, his phone chimes again.

**Octavia: The guy was drunk, but I’m pretty sure the transitive property tells us the pterodactyl was drunk too.**

Clarke doesn’t even get the chance to try to use any part of Bellamy’s body as a karaoke microphone. She passes out in the cab on the way back to their apartment and he has to go fetch her and carry her upstairs.


	39. Pavlov

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy's been secretly conditioning Clarke. She's maybe less than happy about it when she finds out. (Also, there's baklava.)

There’s a lot of things about Bellamy that Clarke finds attractive. His hands. His freckles. The way he holds his pen between his teeth when he’s grading papers. The way his collarbones look peeking out of a V-neck shirt. She could go on for ages, really, but none of them compare to his _voice_.

In the early days of their relationship, Clarke would even call him just so he could talk to her while she got off. It didn’t need to be the words. She was dead serious when she told him that he could even just read her his grocery list and it would get her hot. Just the sultry timbre of his voice rumbling through the line drove her a little out of her mind. 

Of course, he was never content to just say _anything._ No, Bellamy would spend long minutes rasping filthy commands and encouragements. Every time, without fail, as soon as Clarke found herself arching her back in the throes of an orgasm, he would groan low and grind out a sultry, “Fuck, yeah, just like that, princess.”

Every. Single. Time.

It wasn’t even just the phone sex. He did it when they were face to face, too. By the time Bellamy’s 26th birthday rolled around, Clarke hadn’t gotten off even once in damn near two years without hearing those words, but it wasn’t something that she consciously registered.

Until the day before the party.

The only thing that Bellamy asked for for his party was baklava – baklava like their Greek neighbor used to make for him and Octavia on special occasions when they were kids. And really, he’s been so easy-going about the whole thing. He _hates_ parties. Actually, Bellamy might sort of hate people, but that hasn’t stopped him from letting Octavia steamroll through the party-planning and creating a guest list a mile long. So there’s no way Clarke could deny him. Except it turns out that making baklava from scratch is _hard_.

Clarke’s cutting into her _fifth_ batch of baklava when she lets out a resigned sigh. Bellamy has patiently tasted each of the four prior recipes, giving her placating compliments, but it was all too obvious that she had failed in her attempts at recreating his childhood memories, so she kept trying. She’s unabashedly nervous as this point, given that she’s got less than 24 hours before the party and this stuff takes a solid eight hours from start to finish. If this batch isn’t right, Bellamy is going to have to settle for sub par and she really doesn’t want that.

“Is this the one?” Bellamy asks, apparently finally lured by the sharp crunch of cooked phyllo beneath Clarke’s knife. He snugs up behind her, one arm sliding around her waist as he peeks his head over her shoulder to land a kiss on her temple.

“I really hope so.” She says, trying to gingerly pull one of the sticky pieces from the pan. “I think I’ve got everything right this time. I added little less honey, a little extra lemon and I let it sit for a full six hours.”

“I’m sure it’s perfect.” He reassures her.

“Look, I need you to be honest. Even if it’s not perfect, I can still make the perfect one _after_ your birthday, okay? This is a never-ending quest, Blake, not just a mission on a timeline.” Once she feels the tips of Bellamy’s wild curls tickling her neck as he nods, she raises the confection to his mouth, licking her own fingers once he takes it from her hand. “Honesty, Bell. Is this…I mean…is it close or…is it really supposed to taste like that?”

Bellamy’s answering groan seems to rumble through her entire body. “Fuck, yeah, just like that, princess.”

Clarke shivers and has to lean back into Bellamy’s chest to stay upright as she whimpers through tightly pressed lips, warmth curling through her body to settle low in her stomach.

She doesn’t come, but it’s a near thing. Close enough that she stands in stunned silence for several moments. In fact, Clarke doesn’t know how much time has gone by when she feels Bellamy shaking at her back - _laughing_.

“What’s wrong with you?” Clarke hisses, feeling solid on her feet again. “Jesus, what’s wrong with me?” Another heartbeat passes in silence. “PAVLOV! Come on, Bellamy, tell me you didn’t!”

“Didn’t what?”

“Didn’t train me to come on…on command!”

The smug smile he presses into the side of her neck is all the confirmation that Clarke needs. “Clearly not. You’re never that quiet. Give me another year or two and I’ll make it happen.”

Clarke wiggles until she can slide out of Bellamy’s arms so that she can land a punch on his arm. “It doesn’t work that way!”

She knows it’s the wrong thing to say when his eyes light up. “I look forward to proving you wrong, princess.”

Clarke narrows her eyes, but ultimately drops it. Anything else she says now will just egg him on and she doesn’t fancy goading him into trying that little trick again somewhere more public. “Did I at least get your stupid pastry from hell right?”

His fingers are warm and gentle as they curl around Clarke’s jaw. “It’s even better than I remember it, actually. Thank you, really. I can’t even put into words how much it means.”

“You’re lucky I love you.” Clarke grumbles before turning back to the stove. Now that she has it right she needs to at least quadruple her recipe for tomorrow.


	40. Arrowverse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The genderbent Clarke-as-Oliver and Bellamy-as-Felicity Arrowverse fic,that no one asked for, but everyone probably needs.

Bellamy would like to think that he’s capable of defending himself. It’s a point of pride, really. So he’s less than thrilled when his reaction to finding that there’s someone hiding in his backseat is to just jump and ~~squeal~~ let out a manly shout.

“Relax, Bellamy, I’m not going to hurt you.” A familiar voice soothes. He blinks, still in shock as the massive green lump shifts, throwing off a hood and revealing none other than Clarke Griffin. His boss. His boss who apparently moonlights as Ark City’s arrow-wielding vigilante.

He should really be more surprised.

“Oddly, this explains a lot.” He raises his eyebrows as the realization washes over him. Sure, he knew there was something odd about a lot of her requests – energy drinks in a syringe? – but he didn’t think all of the pieces of the puzzle led to _this_. “Jesus, Clarke, you’re bleeding.”

“Thanks for pointing it out.”

Bellamy swallows around the lump in his throat at the sight of her vest darkening over her chest, soaked with blood. “Hospital, right? We should go to a hospital?”

“No!” Clarke shouts, then groans like raising her voice was a terrible decision. “No hospitals.”

“Are you crazy? You’ve been – what? Shot? When you get shot, you go to the hospital. That’s the way it goes.” 

“No. I need you to take me to my father’s old recycling plant.” She lets her head fall back onto the seat like the argument is over, eyes falling more closed by the second.

Bellamy shakes his head, incredulous. “The recycling plant? Clarke, you need a _doctor_ not a bunch of old junk.”

“The plant, Bellamy! I’m going to pass out in about forty-five second, so I need you to swear to me that you’re not going to take me anywhere else.”

The determination burning in her eyes makes Bellamy nod his head. “Okay, sure, the recycling plant.”

Bellamy’s fairly certain that he breaks at least three traffic laws on his way to the old plant. When he throws his car into park outside of the back door, he doesn’t think beyond pulling Clarke from the backseat and into the cradle of his arms. He manages to open the unlocked door with a twist of his hip, but then finds himself standing in the middle of an old packing floor with no idea what he’s supposed to do next.

“Downstairs.” Clarke croaks, like she’s been reading his mind. “Thirty feet to your left along the east wall there’s a door that leads to the basement.”

Bellamy follows her directions and finds himself hustling down an old metal set of stairs that leads to the most weirdly outfitted room he’s ever seen – computers, a salmon ladder, tables, _weapons_. He’s beginning to think that this might be Clarke’s - _the Arrow’s_ \- lair when he feels the sharp edge of a blade pressed to his throat.

It’s only for a moment before the metal clatters to the ground.

“ _Clarke._ ” A woman’s voice breathes, sounding absolutely gutted.

It takes a second before Bellamy is feeling brave enough to look, but when he does he finds Clarke’s bodyguard, Lexa. “What do I do?” He asks, hefting Clarke’s weight in his arms slightly as though Lexa needs the reminder that she’s there.

“Quick, on the table. Keep pressure on the wound.” Lexa guides him to metal table on wheels and doesn’t even wait for him to put Clarke down before she’s pulling open drawers and throwing supplies at him over her shoulder. Gauze, some kind of tweezer-looking things, a spool of thin, silk thread and finally, a bag of blood.

When Lexa returns, she inspects the wounds and decides that Clarke will live so long as she works quickly. From there, it’s a blur of trying his best to follow her directions as they remove the bullet, sterilize the wound and stitch it closed.

“Thank you for your help.” Lexa tells him when she’s satisfied that Clarke is stable. It’s the first thing she’s said to him that’s not a direct order.

“Yeah, sure. It’s not, uh, it’s what I would’ve done for anyone bleeding out in my back seat. I think.” He takes a spin around the lair, fingers lingering over the keyboards and pausing to test the sharpness of the arrows lined upon a nearby table. The thick drop of blood that wells up lets him know that Clarke doesn’t mess around.

“You don’t seem too surprised by this.” Lexa observes, gesturing to the room around them.

Bellamy shrugs.

“Have you had this pegged since the beginning?”

“Not exactly. I just knew something was up.” Bellamy grins thinking back to their previous interactions. “Clarke’s not exactly a great liar. Spilled lattes don’t make bullet holes in laptops and scavenger hunts don’t generally involve arrows – weirder yet given the recent appearance of a certain arrow-slinging vigilante.”

Lexa nods, a small smirk playing around her lips. “Clarke’s much better at punching her way out of things than she is talking her way out of things.”

Bellamy scoffs. “You’re no prize, either. You were there for the whole ‘energy drink in a syringe’ incident.” Lexa lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “What was really in that, anyway?”

“Red – the reaper drug. That location you tracked helped us take down the Mountain Man, you know.”

“Clarke stopped the Mountain Man?” Bellamy shakes his head in wonder. “You and Clarke are taking down criminals.”

“And you, Bellamy. We couldn’t have done a lot of this without you.”

Bellamy takes a minute to bask in that praise. He got into computers because they were easier to understand than people and they never judged him when he babbled, but it’s not like he’s never dreamed of helping people. The idea that his skills have been an asset in all of this? It’s mind blowing.

“She trusts you, you know.” Lexa says, pulling him out of his thoughts. “I haven’t learned much about Clarke’s years away, but I do know that she’d never put herself in that vulnerable of a position – unconscious, alone with you – unless she had absolute faith in you to…to protect her.”

Bellamy can’t help the way his eyes slide back to Clarke and if his breath goes a little shaky at the idea that this woman has that kind of unwavering trust in him, well, no one has to know.


	41. The Mountain Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Mountain Man is back in play and kidnaps Bellamy to draw out Clarke. **(AKA Part 2 of the Arrowverse that _apparently_ someone actually did ask for!!)**

The Mountain Man is back – managed to break out of jail while the city was falling apart around him. Hundreds of people across the city are suffering withdrawal symptoms after the Mountain man managed to get some Red into their systems.

_He even got Lexa._

Bellamy’s seen Lexa get shot and hardly even flinch, so to see her shivering and writing in pain…he knows it’s bad. He knows that people are suffering and he also knows that he can _do_ something about it.

He stares at his computer screen in the lair beneath the club. Hundreds of little red dots spread across the city map. There has to be a connection between them. It’s not like the Mountain Man went around randomly stabbing passersby without them noticing. Lexa hefts herself onto the stool next to him, sweat still beading on her brow.

“That’s all the people who were infected?” She asks, tipping her head toward the screen. Bellamy nods. “There’s no pattern.”

“Gee, thanks so much for pointing that out. You’re just so helpful, why do you even need me?” What? Just because she’s suffering doesn’t mean that he suddenly _likes_ her. If anything, things have only gotten more tense between them in the months since she and Clarke took Bellamy in full-time.

The look Lexa shoots at him says that if she were feeling better she’d be punching him. “That’s their home addresses, right? Could you map it by work address instead?”

“The way you ask that – sometimes I wonder how you manage to check your own email.” Bellamy shakes his head and resorts the map in a matter of seconds.

They both gasp at the clear route through the city – one tiny dot after another lining up in a wide loop. “It’s a path.” Bellamy notes.

“Hey! 49th and Lincoln – that’s where I got my flu shot.”

“Flu shot.” Bellamy mutters, turning to the screen on his right to pull up the mobile clinic’s route. Every single dot matches one of their stops. “It’s in the flu shots.”

Lexa nods, expression hardening. “We’re going to need some Red if we’re going to reverse engineer something to help with the withdrawal symptoms – something non-addictive. Where’s the truck now?”

Bellamy shrugs. “Back at the clinic. Should we call Clarke?”

Lexa immediately shakes her head. “No. Clarke’s at her mom’s trial. She’s busy.” The trial wherein Abby Griffin is being tried for the murders of the 300 people who died when the Ark neighborhood crumbled to the ground last year – due to the structural issues with the tunnels the city was built on that Abby covered up. Probably best not to pull Clarke away from that. “I’ll go.”

Lexa pushes herself off the stool and promptly doubles over, panting with exertion. “No. You’re not in any shape to be going anywhere. I’ll go.”

Bellamy grabs his coat and doesn’t wait to see what Lexa’s response is. When he doesn’t hear her following him, he guesses it means that he’s won.

The truck is ridiculously easy to find. It’s just sitting in the clinic parking lot and the doors aren’t even locked. Bellamy eases open one door and calls in a quick, “Hello?” When he gets no response he hops in.

Even the chilled cabinets aren’t locked, he just pulls on the handle and comes face to face with dozens of vials of the tainted flu vaccine. “Gotcha.” He proclaims, mouth quirking up in a victorious smile.

“Funny. I was thinking the same thing.” Bellamy whips around, coming face to face with the Mountain Man. He’s only seen the guy on TV footage, and even there he looked frightening. In person he looks positively _unhinged_ \- eyes wide with manic delight, his whole body almost twitching. Like a live wire.

Bellamy may have spent the last few months fighting crime with Clarke and Lexa, but he does that from behind a computer. He doesn’t actually _know_ how to fight. The Mountain Man has him on the ground with his hands bound before he can even think of a way to get away.

It can’t be more than twenty minutes between when the Mountain Man takes Bellamy and when Clarke shows up. Bellamy is sure that the phone call helped, though how the Moutain Man was able to make the connection between him, Clarke and the Arrow when the rest of the city has remained ignorant, Bellamy’s not sure. They’re in Clarke’s fancy office up at the top floor of The Griffin Group’s building. The Mountain Man hasn’t unbound his hands and he’s had a gun pressed to Bellamy’s back since they got settled here.

He’s not proud of it, but Bellamy’s probably shaking as hard as Lexa was this afternoon.

It’s impossible to hear Clarke arrive, what with the way she moves like a ghost, but when Bellamy sees her green leather-clad legs come around the corner, he shakes harder. On the one hand, it’s a relief that she’s come to save him. On the other, they’re still in all kinds of danger, maybe even more now – the Mountain Man knows Clarke’s secret identity, and Clarke’s now confirmed it. And there’s still the matter of the crazy man with the gun.

“Nice place you got here.” The Mountain Man taunts. “Great view of the city your mother let be destroyed.”

“What do you want?” Clarke grinds out, jaw clenched, eyes locked on the Mountain Man.

“You poisoned me. Threw me to rot underground in jail. You have no idea how much I hated you for that.” The Mountain Man actually chuckles, standing to lay his hands on Bellamy’s shoulders. “Turns out I’m not the only one who hates you. I’ve got a lot of new friends because of you, Ms. Griffin. Mutual hatred really brings people together. One of them even set me up with my new operation, gave me everything I needed to draw you out.”

“For what?” Clarke growls. Bellamy knows she just wants to get to the point and finish this.

“For this!” The gunshots make Bellamy jump and close his eyes. When he opens them Clarke’s gone and half of the windows are spider-webbed with cracks stemming from the massive holes shot through them.

The Mountain Man grabs Bellamy and tugs him through the office, searching for Clarke. She drops down behind them, then, bow drawn and aimed at the Mountain Man, who throws his gun to the side in a fit. “Oh, great, so now we have to move on to Plan B.”

He pulls out one of his double syringes, the blood-red liquid inside leaving no doubt as to what it contains. “Low your bow, Arrow girl.”

Clarke hesitates, eyes darting between Bellamy and the Mountain Main before slowly lowering the compound bow and tossing the arrow to the side. “Your problem is with me, not him. Let him go and we can settle this.”

The Mountain Man throws back his head and laughs. “Well, then, let’s just consider this your penalty for not dying, for making me have to go the Plan B in the first place.” Bellamy sees out of the corner of his eye as the Mountain Main brings the syringe down to his neck.

He _doesn’t_ even see Clarke move. Just hears the soft swish of the arrows as they fly past him and the sickening thud they make when they land in the Mountain Man’s chest – one after the other until he staggers backwards. His weight against the already damaged window is enough to make the glass give, shattering to pieces as he sails through the empty space.

A car alarm goes off below as Clarke finally gets to Bellamy. “Bell, are you okay?”

Bellamy swallows, draws in a shaky breath and nods. Aside from a few bruises and the sure-to-be traumatic memories, he hasn’t been hurt at all. “I’m good. I’m fine. Clarke –“ He looks down, sees the tear in the arm of her jacket and the way the fabric has darkened, “you were shot!”

Clarke smiles. “It’s nothing. I’m okay. Come on.” She bends down, uses an arrowhead to sever the plastic ties around Bellamy’s wrists.

“But you…” Bellamy looks around, throws a hand half-heartedly toward the shattered window. He doesn’t want to say _killed that guy _because he doesn’t really want to think about what’s just happened.__

__“Bellamy.” Clarke says, voice steady and intense, eyes tracking between both of Bellamy’s. “It doesn’t matter. What’s important is that you’re okay. Now let’s get you back so you can make that cure. You’re going to help a lot of people tonight, Bell.”_ _


	42. Speechless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 5 times that Clarke left Bellamy speechless and the 1 time he couldn't stop babbling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is literally the sappiest thing I have ever written. What is life?

1\. The Charity Gala  
Bellamy shifts awkwardly on his feet, tugging at the collar of his rented tuxedo. Clarke had to promise him do much top-shelf bourbon just to get him to agree to go to this thing. God, he’s dreading every second of this stupid event. Hours spent rubbing elbows with Clarke’s mother and the rest of the rich, snobby crowd. Really, it’s like his own personal hell.

He’s just considering how mad Clarke would be if he started running in the opposite direction when she emerges from her building. “Sorry I’m so late.” She says, breathless, as she fiddles with her hair. “You wouldn’t believe how much body tape it took to get this thing to cover my ass enough to keep it decent.”

“Uh…” Bellamy stutters, taking in Clarke’s form. He’s _never_ seen her like this. He’s never done a good job of hiding how attracted he is to Clarke. At least, he’s never done a good job of hiding it from anyone _but_ Clarke, but tonight? He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to act normal around her when she looks like this.

Clarke is wearing a skin tight gown that looks like it’s made entirely of glitter. One might think it’s modest from the high neckline in the front, but when she turns, Bellamy sees what she means about preserving her decency. It drops so far he’s shocked he can’t already see the crack of her ass. Her hair falls in soft waves over one shoulder and her eyes sparkle with the kind of mischief only she can pull off.

“You okay there, Bell?” She asks, head cocking to the side as she fiddles with the fabric of her dress. “You’re not having second thoughts are you?”

Bellamy opens his mouth, trying and failing to make words come out.

“Oh come on, I already paid handsomely for your company tonight. You’re not allowed to give me the pouty silent treatment, too.”

At Bellamy’s continued useless jaw-flapping, Clarke sighs and hooks her arm through his. “Fine, but you only get to pout until we get there. The whole reason I bribed you into this was so I’d have someone to talk to and make fun of all the annoying people with. If you’re going to refuse to talk to me the whole time, then I’m not buying you any liquor.”

2\. The Hydrant  
The whine of Bellamy’s buzzer breaks through his concentration, pulling him away from the book he’d been engrossed in. “Yeah?” He calls through the old box.

“It’s me. Let me in! Let me in!” Clarke.

Bellamy furrows his brow. “What are you doing here on a Sunday morning, Clarke?”

“JUST LET ME IN YOU IDIOT!” Her voice all but screeches at him.

“Okay, okay, fine.” He mumbles to himself and lets her up.

Clarke comes barreling through the door a minute later, dashing straight for the kitchen and throwing clothes off as she goes.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Bellamy asks, picking up her _sopping wet_ jacket from his floor.

“Out for a run. Fire hydrant catastrophe. Soaked. So cold. Cold. Cold. Cold.” He hears what can only be her shoes go flying into his cabinets as he rounds the corner into his kitchen after her.

“Wait, what does that have to do with you being here?” He muses out loud.

“Your place was closer. Cold. Cold. Cold. Cold. Need new clothes!”

Bellamy chuckles and stops dead in his tracks when he finally lands his eyes on her. She looks a little bit like a drowned rat with the way her hair is weighed down and clinging to her face and neck, though the December chill is evident in the few frozen chips he can see in it. She’s also shucked her shoes, socks, jacket, and shirt onto his floor, leaving her in only her spandex running shorts and a sports bra.

Clarke is rubbing her arms over every inch of her body to try to bring some heat back into it and he can’t help but follow those hands over each inch of her bare flesh. He’s never seen Clarke in so little clothing. Imagined it, sure – and quite accurately, he’d like to say -- but never seen it with his own eyes. Bellamy opens and closes his mouth a few times, trying to make words come out but ultimately failing.

Eventually, he bursts into action. He hustles back to the living room to grab the blanket he’d been sitting under and brings it back to drape over Clarke while he runs warm water in the bathroom. Finally, he comes back and shuffles her into the bathroom, pulling the blanket from her arms as he pushes her under the warm spray.

3\. The Game  
It’s ridiculous, really. Bellamy doesn’t even _like_ sports! There’s just something about seeing Clarke in her element here. She’s got on the team jersey, eye black under her eyes and she’s downright _screaming_ at the players, yelling about some botched play.

She’s never looked hotter.

Bellamy sits in the stands, transfixed by Clarke, while Clarke is transfixed by the game. Eventually, a whistles blows signaling half time or huddle time or commercial time or, well, something. He just knows that they stop playing.

“I swear, one of these days the GM is going to come his senses and fire that idiot.” She says to Bellamy like he’s supposed to understand what that means. “Hey, I’m going to go grab a pretzel. Do you want anything?”

Bellamy just blinks at her, taking in her excited flush.

“Yoo hoo!” Clarke calls, hand waving in front of Bellamy’s face. “You okay there?”

He just nods.

“Do you want anything?”

He shakes his head, unable to form words around the lump rising in his throat. This is different. He’s not just attracted to Clarke because she’s objectively hot. Here, in this moment he’s just straight up attracted to _Clarke_. Her sass and her fire. Just everything that she is.

4\. The First Date  
By now, Bellamy thinks it should be impossible for Clarke to walk out of her door wearing anything that should shock him. He’s seen her in all manner of dress from black tie gowns to everyday casual to the big t-shirts she wears lounging at him to almost nothing at all. He thinks that he should be immune to Clarke Griffin. Then again, if he’d become immune to Clarke Griffin, his heart probably wouldn’t be nearly beating out of his chest with anticipation.

If he’d become immune to her, he probably wouldn’t be taking her on a date. Their first date. Finally, after two long years.

When she finally does emerge, she’s not wearing anything he wasn’t expecting. Chucks and one of those weird outfits that’s shorts and a shirt that are attached to each other like some weird adult onesie. She looks gorgeous, but that’s nothing new.

No, it’s the way that she looks at _him_ tonight.

She gives him a long, slow onceover that makes him reconsider his laid back choice of a two toned black t-shirt and black jeans. When her eyes make it back to his face she opens her mouth, then closes it again and looks away, a flush rising in her cheeks. She’s _nervous_ he realizes abruptly and Bellamy doesn’t think he’s ever seen Clarke act nervous before.

But nervous for _him_? It’s too much.

They both stare at each other, sort of uselessly for a few moments, neither of them able to speak. Bellamy hopes it doesn’t last, no matter how touching a moment it is, because two speechless people will make for one horrible date.

Eventually, Bellamy steels himself enough to reach out and take Clarke’s hand, twining their fingers together to lead her down the street to their favorite Italian restaurant.

5\. The Wedding  
Miller’s been ribbing Bellamy all week about cold feet. Bellamy knows that it’s actually his way of checking on his friend, making sure that Bellamy has been feeling good going into today, but it hasn’t made a different. Bellamy hasn’t felt a hint of nerves all week, only excitement. He’s waited so long to be able to call Clarke his wife, but he’s been sure of it for years now. 

It was two long years of pining after her before finally asking her out. Then another year of dating before he felt like he had the right to ask her to marry him – forget about the fact that he actually bought the ring after their third date. Then another year for their engagement while the wedding preparations were made. There’s nothing that could happen to make him unsure of this marriage.

That doesn’t mean, however, that he’s not feeling anxious anticipation, waiting for the chapel doors to open and reveal his bride. They’ve never been much for tradition, but Clarke did refuse to show Bellamy her dress before the big day. Not even a peek. When the doors open, all Bellamy can see is her silhouette as she’s backlit by the bright sunlight outside. He can see that her dress must be sleek and form-fitting, but then, Clarke would never go for a big princess dress.

It feels like long, agonizing hours as Bellamy waits for her to actually be visible, but when he finally gets to take in the sight of her he can forget about being able to _speak_. It’s like all of the air has been sucked from the room, it punches right out of his chest as his entire world narrows down to Clarke.

It’s not the dress. She could be wearing clown shoes and he probably wouldn’t even notice. It’s the wonder shining in her eyes and the way that she walks down the aisle toward him with the same surety he feels in his gut. No matter what she’s wearing right now, she looks like _his wife_ and that just floors Bellamy. Shatters his entire world.

When she’s close enough to grab her hand, Bellamy finally sucks in a shaky breath. “You ready for this, Blake?” She asks, a smirk tugging up one side of her lips.

“Holy fucking shit, you’re really mine.” Bellamy murmurs before he realizes he’s even spoken.

Clarke laughs, reaches out and smacks his arm. Yeah, this is the way their wedding should be starting. “Glad you’re on board with the proceedings, Bell.”

+1. The Hospital  
“I hate you so much!” Clarke screams, tears tracking down her cheeks as sweat coats her brow.

She has literally never been more beautiful than she is in this moment.

“Almost there, Clarke, give me another big push.” The doctor calls from the foot of the bed.

Bellamy can’t even feel his hand anymore for how tight Clarke is crushing it in hers, but he couldn’t care less. Where he usually finds himself at a loss for words where Clarke is concerned, right now, in anticipation of finally meeting their son – _their son_ \- he can’t seem to stop the words from tumbling from his mouth.

“Jesus, Clarke, you are the most amazing woman that I have ever met. I always knew that I was lucky but I never knew just how much. You’ve always been so strong, strong enough for the both of us when you need to be and I have no idea what I’ve done to deserve someone like you but I am going to spend every day for the rest of my life trying my best to be worthy of you.” He has to pause as Clarke’s next groaning yell eclipses his voice.

“Every morning when I wake up to your face you’re more beautiful than the day before. I can’t remember a time when you walked into the room and I didn’t have to fight for air. I know when I married you I said that you were mine but I was so wrong, Clarke. I’m _yours_ , so very yours, and in about a minute I’m going to be his, too. I swear sometimes I love you so much I don’t know how I have room in my life to do anything _but_ love you and –“ This time it’s not Clarke that cuts him off, but the whining cry of their son as he enters the world.


	43. Party Tricks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke accidentally discovers one of Bellamy's party tricks and, well, she never claimed to be able to back away from a challenge.

“Holy shit!” Clarke squeals, staring at the two halves of the apple, one in each of Bellamy’s hands – the hands that just ripped the damn fruit in half. “When did you turn into the Hulk?!”

Bellamy raises an eyebrow and takes a bit out of one of the apple halves. “Good question. My mother always did joke about standing in front of one too many microwaves when she was pregnant with me. Maybe it’s some kind of fetal radiation symptom.”

“Shut up. You know that was super impressive right?”

“Kind of hot?” He grins, all too smug. 

Clarke sighs and shakes her head. “Maybe a little, but seriously. I’ve _lived_ with you for the last year. There’s no way you’ve always been eating apples that way. I would’ve noticed.”

“Or maybe you just don’t watch my fruit consumption as closely as you think. Is it really that big of a deal? I just don't like to waste any of it, but I hate having to spit out the seeds. It’s just a party trick anyway.”

“No, no, no. That’s not a party trick. That’s just crazy. _This_ is a party trick.” Clarke makes a flourish of grabbing one of the dice and a rubber band from the junk drawer. She balances the die on Bellamy’s shoulder and takes a few steps back before shooting the die off with unerring accuracy.

It escalates from there. By the end of the night, they’ve learned that Bellamy can not only rip apples in half, but _phone books_ and Clarke can hit a thumb tack from the furthest lateral distance their cramped apartment offers.


	44. Class Interrupted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy pays teacher!Clarke a visit during class and incites a little teenage insanity.

Clarke should be mad when Bellamy comes bursting through the door in the middle of her first period class. After all, he’s just interrupted her and her students in the middle of an epically intense discussion of Guernica. Then again, he’s got a cup of coffee from her favorite funky steampunk café in one hand and her forgotten lunchbox in the other.

“Hey, princess, thought you might want these.” He offers as an explanation, handing both to her simultaneously. He takes half a step away from her before leaning back to quickly drop a kiss to her temple, like he can’t resist doing it.

“Thanks, Bell.” Clarke breaths. She’d like to imagine that she remained passive and professional in front of her students, but her body has a mind of its own in the face of her fiancé. She knows that her eyes sparkle when they land on him, that she somehow manages to stand a little straighter while feeling more relaxed than ever, and that her lips curl up ever so slightly.

It’s no surprise that when Bellamy breezes back through the door, gone just as quickly as he’d come, that her students dissolve into a chorus of “oohs” and teasing remarks. Clarke has always kept quiet about her personal life at school for this very reason. It’s tough, even on a good day, to simultaneously get twenty-five sixteen-year-olds to listen to her lesson. For teenagers, a hint of their teacher’s personal life is like blood in the water to sharks.

She spends the last thirty minutes of class trying and failing to get students to focus back on the painting, all while trying to dodge the personal questions that students throw at her. Some she answers reflexively in an attempt to placate students enough to get them to refocus – “Is that your boyfriend?” (“No, he’s my fiancé.”) “What’s his name?” (“Bellamy.”) “What does he do?” (“He’s a cop.”) Others are met mostly with stammered redirection and furious blushing – “Are you going to have kids?” “How did you know he was the one?” “Is he a good kisser?” “Why does he call you princess?” Then there's the one unfortunate detention she has to hand out - "Seriously, miss, are you willing to share? Because I turned 18 last week."

With a belly full of warm coffee and her heart still tingling in her chest in the afterglow of such a sweet domestic moment, she finds it hard to be mad about the lost second half of class. Besides, they’d gotten through more analysis in the first half than they had on any other day ally ear. It also gives her a good excuse to plot a little bit of revenge embarrassment for Bellamy at work.


	45. The Wastelands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dystopian AU: Miller drops Clarke at outlaw leader Bellamy's feet after finding her stealing from their med supplies. (erm, or rather, I suppose this is a _different_ dystopian AU than canon?)

“Got something for you, boss.” Miller’s voice rings out from down the hall, strained by something, Bellamy thinks.

“Great.” Bellamy groans. Miller never brings anything but trouble. Ever since the war and the rise of Arkadia – the gated, “safe” community behind the thick metal walls – Bellamy’s had nothing but trouble on his hands out in the wastelands. He’s done his best to make a safe life for himself and for Octavia. In the last few years, he’s carved out a section of territory and built up his own army. It’d be a stretch to call it safe, but in his sector, there’s at least order. He has respect because he’s demanded it and paid his dues, often in blood, and now he has the pleasure of working his ass of day in and day out to handle the lovely little troubles that Miller and the rest of his men drop at his doorstep.

What could it be today? More grounders hunting his people? Maybe Arkadia’s sent out another “search and rescue” party to kidnap some more children? If he’s lucky, maybe some idiot brought home another bushel of hallucinogenic berries and everyone is high out of their minds again. 

The moment that Miller bursts through the doorway, Bellamy sees the reason for his strain. He’s got an armful of squirmy blonde thrown over his shoulder – a short-looking girl who’s clearly cursing the both of them ten ways to Sunday, even with her mouth gagged. She forces herself into a contorted position so that she can take a look around the room and _damn_ , if looks could kill he imagines the entire compound would be dead at the hands of this girl.

“What now?” Bellamy asks, hand coming up to rub between his brows. As if he didn’t have a big enough headache already. It’s not like they’re just weeks away from winter and Murphy just burned down the food storage building. Oh wait, that’s exactly what’s happening.

“Caught this one trying to steal medical supplies. Morphine, I think it was. Thing is, I’ve never seen her before, so she can’t be from here. Then when I got a closer look I noticed the wristband.”

Bellamy rises to his feet and stalks toward the pair. When he’s close enough, he pulls the girl’s bound hands into his own, glad all over again that she’s gagged because he’s pretty sure she might bite him otherwise. Sure enough, she’s got the shiny tech-laden metal bracelet latched onto her wrist that marks her as Arkadian. “If you’ve got one of those, what on earth are you doing out here, little princess?”

She only glares and wriggles a bit, one of her knees connecting with Miller’s back in a solid _thud_ since he’s still got her thrown over his shoulder. It takes some maneuvering, but together they work to set her down in one of the chairs, grabbing a few lengths of rope to restrain her before taking the cloth gag out of her mouth.

Surprisingly, now that she has the freedom, she doesn’t scream for help or to be released.

“Want me to stick around for this?” Miller asks as Bellamy circles the girl.

Bellamy gives her another once over, considering, before shaking his head. “No, go back to your post.” If she tries to run, he can handle her.

“Let’s start easy.” Bellamy offers once he hears Miller’s footfalls fade into the distance. “You got a name?”

“Clarke.” She offers bitingly.

“Clarke.” Bellamy considers the name for a moment. It makes something tickle at the back of his consciousness, something that he wants to work on until he can pull it into the light, but he doesn’t have time for that right now, so he forges on. “Why are you in the wastelands, Clarke?”

She snorts. “For the scenery.”

“Arkadia must know you’re out here. After all, that’s what the nifty little piece of jewelry you’ve got does, right? Relays all of your vitals, allows them to keep track of your location. If you got floated, they’d remove it so you couldn’t trade it. So that leaves us with two options, either the Ark doesn’t _care_ that you’re here, or they actually sent you.”

Clarke clenches her jaw, eyes narrowing, but staying focused on him.

Bellamy scrutinizes her, enjoys the way that she squirms slightly under his gaze. “No, no, they didn’t send you. If they did, you’d have orders on what to do if you got caught. The Ark doesn’t like loose ends. That thing –“ he points toward the wrist cuff “has enough access to your body that I’m sure it has some kind of self-destruct or terminate function, something lethal. If you were an Ark operative, you’d never actually let yourself be captured. So it must be the first. The Ark doesn’t care where you traipse.”

The way that Clarke’s eyes widen ever so slightly tells Bellamy that he’s right on the money. He’s gotten good at this through the years – reading people. “There’s only one reason the Ark wouldn’t care what you get up to. Clearly, you’ve got enough privilege and they’ve got enough trust in your loyalty that they don’t believe you’d ever do anything to compromise them, even in the wastelands. Shit!”

Bellamy takes two long strides and slams his fist into the wall of his office. “Clarke. Clarke Griffin. Abby Griffin’s daughter. You’re fucking Arkadian _royalty_. You really are a princess. What the fuck’s Clarke Griffin doing stealing morphine in the wastelands?”

“Don’t bother trying to ransom me.” She mumbles. “My mother won’t care.”

“Interesting. Are you running away, princess? Morphine could get you just about anything you wanted if you know the right person to trade with. It could get you anywhere you wanted to go. It makes sense.”

“God damn it. The drugs were for a kid. This little blonde boy. He’s got a gash that’s infected so bad it might kill him if he doesn’t get his arm amputated and, while I’m not interested in letting him die, I’m sure as fuck not about to just cut his arm off with nothing to numb the pain. I wanted to find an anesthetic, but all I found was the morphine. I figured it’d at least make it bearable.”

Bellamy takes another minute to look her over. She looks him straight in the eye, unflinching under the heavy scrutiny this time. She’s telling the truth.

He sighs, scrubs a hand down his face and admits defeat. “You can’t save everyone, but that’s not a lesson I expect you to learn in your first days in the wastelands. If you’re going to insist on taking morphine to save the kid – though, keep in mind, he’ll probably die anyway – then we’re going to need something in return. That’s how things work out here.”

She flinches. “I’m not going to have sex with you.”

That makes him freeze. “What?”

A little shrug, her eyes now focused on Bellamy’s shoes for the first time. “It’s not like I’ve got anything to give you – everything I own is on me right now. So I don’t know what else you could mean.”

“That’s not…” Bellamy heaves another sigh. “Your bracelet – the cuff. For starters.”

“Starters?”

“If you’re Abby Griffin’s daughter and you’re planning on amputating some kid’s arm, you must think yourself some kind of doctor.”

“I’m not a doctor, but I know my way around a clinic.”

Bellamy nods. “Good. We could use someone like that around here. We do the best we can to patch up wounds, but we don’t have any medical expertise beyond some less-than-perfect stitches. If you’re leaving Arkadia behind, you’ll need a place to stay – a _safe_ place, where someone can protect you and where there’s food and people you can trust. If you’re willing to play doctor, we can give you that.”

Clarke’s eyes snap to Bellamy’s, eyebrows going up to her hairline. “You’re offering me a place to stay?”

“If you want it.” Bellamy tries his best to give her a smile to reassure her, but it’s not something that he does often anymore so it feels more like a grimace.

“I’m tied to a chair.”

“I’ll untie you, then.”

“I don’t like you.”

“I don’t like you, either.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

Bellamy huffs a laugh and sets to work at the knots at her ankles.


	46. The Wastelands Pt 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor and Bellamy drag a roughed up Murphy into Clarke's clinic and the grounders declare war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like many of you, I sort of fell in love with this world with that first snippet. It all started with a minor fixation on a more hardened, swearing, ruthless Bellamy as a sort of post-apocalyptic mafioso and, well, now it's more of a _major_ fixation?

Bellamy was right, of course. Clarke amputated the kids arm, successfully even, and he still died less than two weeks later.

If there’s one thing that Clarke’s learned in the last few weeks, it’s that Bellamy is almost always right. Clarke’s decided that it’s nothing special, it’s just that if he’s not sure about something, he chooses to say nothing at all rather than to take guesses. She thinks that it’s an authority thing – he doesn’t want to give anyone anything to point a finger at to question his leadership.

Clarke had gone to check up on the kid and ran into his father – a big hulking mountain of a man, face grim and most every inch that she could see of him covered in scars. She’s not entirely sure what happened. All his father offered was a gruff, “What use do I have for a kid with one arm?” Clarke has her suspicions and none of them are pleasant.

That’s the second thing that she’s learned in the last month or so. All the propaganda that the council in Arkadia used to feed to the public was, surprisingly, _not_ exaggerated. In fact, the wastelands might be even more brutal than they portrayed them. Clarke is confident that if Miller hadn’t caught her stealing drugs and literally dropped her at Bellamy’s feet, she’d probably be dead already, too.

She might be worried that she’ll outlast her welcome, or that Bellamy might realize that he doesn’t actually need her around after all, if only she weren’t spending upwards of fifteen hours a day at the sorry excuse for a clinic seeing all matter of illnesses and wounds. Bellamy’s sector – Skaikru, as she’s heard them referred to – was clearly in desperate need of a medic.

“Everybody clear out!” The leader in question’s gruff voice booms through the clinic, sending more than one patient jumping out of their chair. “Go the fuck home and lock up. Trouble’s coming and you won’t want to be out when it gets here.”

“What’s going on?” Clarke asks as he comes through the doorway into her treatment room, voice sounding smaller than she likes, but dammit if the guy doesn’t have the kind of presence that makes a room feel ten times smaller. Even after the weeks she's spent here, it's still intimidating.

“You, too, squirt.” Bellamy nods his head in Clarke’s direction, but it’s the kid cowering behind her that he’s talking to. “Not safe for you here, right now.”

Reese side steps Clarke now with fake bravado. The girl, who’d lost nearly half her sight in the dust storms, had been good friends with Clarke’s amputee and had immediately latched onto her when she found out that Clarke was sticking around. Reese’s mother had been a nurse and she liked the idea of learning, of doing something good in the world.

She likes Clarke and she’s been a good assistant. Bellamy, on the other hand, Reese is terrified of – not that she’ll ever own up to it. Now, Reese squeaks out something that sounds like goodbye and high tails it out, hopefully headed for home.

“Me?” Clarke asks, keeping her eyes trained on Bellamy.

“No. We need you.” Connor drags, _literally drags_ a body into the room. Together, he and Bellamy heft the guy onto the table.

Clarke whistles and swears under her breath. She’s sure she wouldn’t know him anyway, but the guy on the table is virtually unrecognizable as any distinct person. His face is swollen from what must’ve been brutal and repeated beatings, bruised so badly she’s not even sure what his real skin color is. Besides that, he covered in dried blood, most of which Clarke imagines is his.

“What am I supposed to do?” Clarke asks, because she’s not exactly a coroner and she knows for a fact that Skaikru buries their dead with little fanfare.

“Fix him.” Connor tells her, wiping a bit of errant blood onto his jeans.

She narrows her eyes, but in the extended silence with the full weight of Bellamy’s commanding gaze on her, she moves toward the body and presses her fingers to his neck, looking for a pulse. It’s weak, but sure enough, it’s there. “He’s alive.”

“No shit. That’s why he’s here. Why would I bring you a dead guy?” Bellamy snorts.

“Right, yeah.” Clarke mumbles, heading for the locked cabinet on the far side of the room. She’s going for the small supply of fentanyl they keep, because that magnitude of pain is going to keep the poor sap sidelined for a long time if they don’t do something about it.

Bellamy’s hand snaps outs and circles around her forearm. “No drugs.” He tells her. “That’s John Murphy.”

“ _Oh_.” Clarke breathes. She’s heard whispers of John Murphy since she arrived. From what little she’s pieced together, it seemed like Murphy decided that he was above Bellamy’s law, went on some crusade against a child and got kicked out of the sector. There’s no lost love between Bellamy and Murphy, so she shouldn’t be surprised that Bellamy isn’t willing to dip into their small supply of opioids for him.

“I still say we should just kill him.” Connor pipes up as Clarke moves back toward the bloody mess that is John Murphy.

“Not a good idea.” Bellamy tells him, taking post at the food of the table, stance wide, arms crossed in front of his chest with a knife held loosely in one hand. “I wouldn’t want to put him out of his misery. That’d be too kind. Besides, I’m betting he didn’t spend the last two months lazing lakeside. Showing back up at our doorstep like this? My bet is he’s been with the grounders. He might have good information.”

Clarke spends a few long minutes looking him over, cataloguing which wounds she’s going to have to stitch up and which he’s going to need to heel on his own. “Well he’s clearly been tortured. A beating could be anything, but Bellamy, he’s missing his fingernails and he’s got three fingers that have been crushed. Not broken, but purposefully crushed – like in a vise or something.”

“Grounders.” Connor confirms with a grimace. Clarke’s heard people talk about grounders before, too. They sound like a rather primitive people who’ve always lived on the outskirts, even before the war. No technology to speak of. There’s bad blood between the grounders and the people who live in the sectors in the wastelands – as though people like Bellamy’s Skaikru are infringing on their territory now that the war's over.

“Is that what you meant by trouble coming?” Clarke asks, breath hitching slightly.

“Maybe.” Bellamy says dismissively, one hand coming to scrub down his face. “I don’t get it. So the grounders had Murphy, they tortured him. He’s a snake, so I’m sure he gave up whatever information they asked for. Thing is, he’s not in any state to escape, so they had to have let him go. Why why would they let him go?”

Connor shrugs. “If he gave them all they wanted to know, then they wouldn’t have a use for him any more. So why not?”

“Why not just kill him, though?” Clarke muses.

“So that he could lead them back here?” Connor guesses.

Bellamy shakes his head. “No, no, they already know where we are. It’s not like we’re hiding.”

“Then what?” Connor and Clarke ask together.

“That’s the trouble. I don’t know. Something’s not right. We need to leave. Come on, let’s get you somewhere safe.” Bellamy lands a heavy hand on Clarke’s shoulder and uses it to guide her from the clinic. “Connor, the team’s already on red alert. If the grounders are smart, they’re not going to make their move right now, so we might be in this for a long haul. Make sure everyone’s got their walkies, yeah?”

“Got it.” Connor confirms before jogging through the empty street. Clarke’s never seen the sector this empty. Clearly Skaikru takes Bellamy’s warnings seriously.

“Where are we going?” Clarke asks Bellamy as they move through the sector, keeping to the shadows between buildings.

“I’m taking you to the bunker. It’s underground, completely secure. My sister’s there already.”

“Why can’t I go home?” She doesn’t pause to think about how she’s already calling the little apartment Bellamy’d put her in “home” rather than her mom’s house back in Arkadia. In truth, the wastelands already feel a whole hell of a lot more like home than that place ever did, no matter how scary or dangerous it might be out here.

“It’s not safe there.” Bellamy tells her. His tone brooks no room for argument. He mumbles something to himself that sounds a lot like, “Too close to my place.”

Immediately after he says it, the ground shakes beneath their feet and an explosion goes off behind them, the shockwave enough to knock them over – Clarke landing awkwardly on Bellamy’s back. She feels his back rumbling as he grinds out a string of severe curses.

Clarke rolls off of him and onto her back, propping herself on her elbows to look at the smoke billowing not much more than a hundred yards away. “Was that the clinic?” She asks in disbelief.

“Fucking fuck.” Bellamy hisses. He pulls out his thankfully intact walkie and barks out orders for getting the fire contained. “Had to be. At least it’s relatively isolated.” It’s true. Skaikru had planned ahead with their clinic, wanting it to be secluded, surrounded by a couple of empty buildings in case the need ever arose for a mass quarantine.

“I don’t understand.” Clarke thinks back, racking her brain for what she might’ve been doing at the clinic to cause that kind of explosion. It’s not as though they had any open gas lines. Not like she was mixing chemicals before they brought Murphy in.

“It’s Murphy. Murphy was a bomb. Since when do grounders use bombs?” Bellamy asks no one in particular before pulling himself to his feet. 

“I still don’t understand. Why would they do that? What does that mean?”

“It means the game is changing, Clarke. We’ve been fighting with the grounders for years, but they just declared war.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...this clearly feels like a sort of cliff-hanger-ish ending, so I can guarantee you this is not the last you'll be getting from this world here! I'd say it's a safe bet that you'll be seeing more revisits to this world than I've done for any of these other little snippets so far, but at this point there's no detailed long-term plan, so for now it's going to stay here in Get Me.


	47. The Wastelands Pt 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy returns from battling with the grounders.

Bellamy is gone for three weeks. His absence, to Clarke, is acute and cutting because she’d become accustomed to spending time with him every day. It’s not just that, though. Even if Clarke had never had a single conversation with Bellamy, his absence would’ve been obvious. The entire sector is on edge when Bellamy is gone - a little more tension in every soldier’s shoulders. People hurry a little quicker through open spaces and take refuge indoors more often. Supplies come in, but it’s not as smooth as Skaikru has gotten used to. When he’s gone, it becomes clear to Clarke that this sector runs well not _with_ Bellamy’s strong hand, but _because of it_.

She thinks that he’s out waging war with the grounders, but given that he left in the middle of the night without so much as a word a little over a week after the incident with John Murphy, she can’t really confirm it. He stuck around long enough to help her salvage what she could from the charred remains of the clinic, to redirect shipments – she’s pretty sure he might’ve ambushed a caravan that was heading for Arkadia, but, he never admitted it outright – to restock on the essentials, and then he was gone.

Since he left so stealthily, Clarke imagines that he’ll return in the same manner. One morning she’ll wake up and he’ll just be there again as though he was never gone at all. The last thing she’s expecting is for him to put a hole in the cracking plaster of her bedroom wall with her doorknob from throwing the door open so violently. In the middle of the night, no less.

Clarke shoots up in bed, still half-asleep, but rapidly awakening as her system floods with adrenaline from the intrusion. (She’s not immune from the paranoia these days either.) She fumbles for the lamp on her bedside table before cursing the fact that, in Bellamy’s absence, the generator to the building has broken down and no one else has been able to fix it. Instead, she grips her hand around the base so that she can use it as a weapon.

Suddenly, her intruder is leaning over her on her bed, one hand clamped over her mouth gently. “Shh,” he insists, “it’s me.”

When she realizes it’s Bellamy, the tension seeps out of her body instantly and she sinks back into the mattress like a puppet whose strings have been cut. “You scared me.” She accuses, put out with him even while remaining ecstatic at his sudden return.

“I’m sorry.” (He doesn’t sound it.) “I couldn’t stay away. I’ve already been gone so long.”

Clarke tries to ignore the way her chest tingles at his words. “Is it over?”

Bellamy shakes his head and he’s close enough, Clarke realizes, that the tips of his hair brush over her forehead as he does. “This war could go on for years, Clarke, but for now, the battle is over.”

“Now what?” She asks. It’s a literal thing – what the hell is he doing in her bedroom in the middle of the night. (Other primary concerns include ‘how the hell did you get in here?’ and ‘does anyone else know where you are?’) It’s also a bigger question – how does Skaikru move on from this?

In the pitch dark, Clarke can’t really make out more than the indistinct outline of his body over hers, but she sees the movement of his arm before his hand comes out to curl around her jaw. His fingers _shake_ as they land on her skin. He grunts, a sound of pure frustration that seems to have a physical presence in the room, before he all but _attacks_ her.

Bellamy’s kiss is anything but gentle. Then again, Clarke never would’ve expected anything else. It’s a shock mostly because Bellamy’s _never_ kissed her before. She wants to pull back and question it; tries, even, but Bellamy chases her with lips and teeth. Even when he gentles, pulling his teeth from her abused lower lip in favor of sucking it between his, it’s still _too much_. When he finally lets Clarke breathe, she gasps in air, knowing for sure that her lips will be bruised in the morning. (She couldn’t care less.)

“I didn’t want to kill them.” Bellamy mumbles, quiet enough that Clarke’s not even sure she’s heard him right before he darts back in to her mouth. Now he doesn’t so much kiss her as run his tongue along the curve of her lips. “They left me no choice.”

He sounds _pained_ , she realizes. “It’s okay, Bell, you did what you had to do.” She runs her hands softly through his hair, trying her best to comfort him through whatever this is.

Bellamy nods, nose brushing along her cheek with his movement. His hands slide down her arms, then, snaking up underneath the hem of her nightshirt to rest on the bare skin of her belly. “They put a target on your back.”

Clarke drops her face into the curve of his neck, shuddering lightly – though whether it’s from his hands on her skin or from the words that she’s not quite sure she understands, she can’t tell. “Mmhmm.” She hums against his jumping pulse point, agreeing without really knowing what he’s talking about. (Agreeing with Bellamy is always a safe bet. He’s never wrong, after all.)

“They knew where I’d bring him.” He says, voice growing tighter with each word, even as his hands grow more relaxed, roaming around to Clarke’s back, up across the smooth expanse of skin until one ventures high enough to circle around the back of her neck, holding her captive.

Bellamy uses the leverage to pull Clarke’s mouth back to his own, continuing to feed more of his urgency into Clarke with every sweep of his tongue against hers. He keeps one hand holding steady at her neck while the other slides down to her knee to hitch her leg against his hip. He uses his grip there to roll them over, Clarke landing sprawled on top of him. His lips move her to such distraction that she almost doesn’t realize they’ve switched positions, that the sheets are tangled around their bodies so tightly she can hardly move. 

“Somehow they knew what you…” He rasps against Clarke’s open lips, but she can’t hear him over the roaring of her blood in her ears. She writhes in his lap without even meaning to, hips grinding down over him on instinct more than anything else, because this is _new_ \- between her mother and Wells she was a virtual social pariah in Arkadia. The movement makes Bellamy pause mid-sentence to choke out a half-breath, so she doesn’t think she’s doing anything _wrong_ at least.

“Fuck, wait –“ Bellamy forces out, body tense as he pulls back slightly.

Clarke didn’t even realize that the sun was rising outside, but now there’s just enough light that she can see him. She gasps, spine going rigid. He’s a _mess_. His hair is tangled and matted down, clothes filthy and ripped and he’s just covered in dirty and sweat and _blood_ , but he doesn’t look like he’s injured – at least not this badly – so Clarke doesn’t even know whose blood it is.

And she’s been crawling all over him.

Sure enough, Clarke looks down to find her own arms and her nightshirt similarly filthy. She can’t see her own face or hair, but she imagines it looks similar. She can even see the cleaner paths where her fingers traced over her skin and the matching grime on her fingertips.

She tries very hard not to think about what may or may not have gotten inside her mouth.

“Clean up first?” Clarke suggests.

Bellamy nods, rolling out from under Clarke and pulling her out of the bed with him. "Clean up during." He amends, leading the way to the bathroom while he mumbles something that sounds like, “I swear if someone in this sector broke the goddamn running water…”


	48. Half Dome

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy and Lincoln free solo climb Half Dome before Bellamy and Clarke's wedding. (The girls are less than pleased.)

It started three years ago. Before their wedding, Octavia’s then-fiancée Lincoln decided that if he was about to take some adventure _out_ of his life by getting married, then he needed to find some more adventure elsewhere.

Enter rock climbing. But, as Octavia tells it, it’s Lincoln so _just_ rock climbing would never be enough. It’s free solo climbing – at least, that’s what Clarke thinks it’s called? Basically, Lincoln started climbing things. By himself. Without any safety equipment. Seriously, it’s just him, his shoes and some chalk for his hands. No ropes, or helmets or spotters or anything.

Octavia, understandably, freaked out at the thought of Lincoln plummeting to his death.

Enter Bellamy. Octavia figured that she could convince her brother to go with her fiancée once – that maybe Bellamy could talk some sense into Lincoln. After all, they’ve become good friends since Octavia and Lincoln first started dating and there’s a lot of respect between them. (A long as no one mentions the time that Bellamy cold-cocked him when he found Lincoln with his hand up Octavia’s shirt.)

Bellamy went with Lincoln to one of his favorite ascents and, instead of successfully talking him out of free-soloing forever, Lincoln actually managed to talk _Bellamy_ into trying it.

Now, just three short weeks before their wedding day, Bellamy decided that he needs to up the ante on the crazy. Like Lincoln, in what is Clarke is sure can be construed as an insult, Bellamy has decided that he needs to do something wild and adventurous before he can possibly walk down the aisle. Since regularly risking his life for nothing more than an adrenaline rush is old hat, he decided to fly out to California and climb the Half Dome – a rock formation more than 1000 feet tall.

Naturally, Lincoln decided to join him.

Clarke and Octavia are standing at the foot of what definitely looks like a sheer vertical climb, watching the tiny dots that are Bellamy and Lincoln ascend. They won’t be back from their descent until tomorrow afternoon – with Miller in tow whose meeting them at the summit with some overnight gear - but at least from here they can make sure they make it to the top without dying. “I’m blaming you for this.” Octavia tells her casually. “If my husband dies, it’s on your conscience.”

Clarke sighs. This is a frequent conversation these days, particularly when they’re watching the men climb, but the stakes have never been this high. She almost appreciates that Octavia’s keeping this light and comfortable. “Hey. One’s your husband and the other is your brother. As far as I’m concerned, they both belong to you so this is your fault.”

“Lies!” Octavia accuses with a flourishing hand gesture. “You have my brother wrapped around your finger. If you tried hard enough, you could’ve gotten him to back out. And we know that if Bell backed out, Lincoln would’ve.”

Clarke huffs and shrugs one shoulder. She might be right. “I do plan on overruling him for the next sixty years or so. Bell thinks this is going to be his big moment – you know, the one that you’re remembered for? He’s been talking about this as some pie in the sky future goal for months. I didn’t want him to resent me for saying no.”

“At least you admit it.” Octavia grumbles, but she smiles and nudges Clarke’s foot with her own. “Now you know why I couldn’t say no to Lincoln in the beginning, either.”

“They’re going to be okay, right?” Clarke asks, voice small after a few minutes of silence.

Octavia nods without hesitation. “They always are.”

They’re so high and so far in the distance that it makes it hard to make out who’s who, let alone what they’re doing at any given moment. Clarke is oddly grateful for it. There are always a few slips – a few missed hand holds that have her heart lurching in to her throat on a regular climb. She doesn’t want to think about what it would do to her to see the details on this climb.

It takes eleven hours before Clarke watches the two tiny blips disappear over the summit of the rock. She literally falls to her knees with relief. Octavia smirks down at her. “Told you they’d be fine.”

But Clarke can see the way her hand shakes when she holds it out to help Clarke back up. “You are the worst.” Clarke tells her. “ _They_ are the worst.”

“Think Miller’s already up there?” Miller left a few hours ahead of them this morning. The goal was for him to be at the summit with supplies by the time the guys got there – most importantly, their phones.

It’s just as Clarke goes to answer Octavia that her phone rings. Incoming video chat from Bellamy. “Princess, are you seeing this?” He asks, a giant smile plastered on his sweaty face as he shows off the view behind his head. The picture shakes a little – Clarke knows from experience that his hands can be twitchy for days after a hard climb.

“I hate you.” Clarke tells him with a pout.

“You love me.” Bellamy corrects, smile not faltering.

“You’re not _that_ bad.” She amends, fighting her own smile.

“Tell the truth.”

Clarke sighs, mostly just to be dramatic, before admitting, “I love you, you asshole.”

He grins, eyes sparkling with humor. “You always did know just how to sweet talk me.”

“How was the climb?”

“This is the greatest day of my life.” He admits and Clarke’s starting to worry that he’s going to get a cramp in his face if he keeps smiling like that. Bellamy _never_ smiles this much. “So far.”

The amendment finally pulls a smile out of Clarke. “I’m glad you made it in one piece, but I’m going to punch you when you get back down here, you know.”

“Was it that bad?”

Clarke shrugs, aiming for light. “Well, I hope you weren’t planning on being married long, because I’m pretty sure you shaved at least thirty years off of my life today.”

The little Bellamy on her phone screen pauses then, scrutinizing Clarke. It’s a testament to how much he cares that he’s giving his own screen 100% of his focus over the view he’s just worked so hard for. “You know I love you, right?”

Clarke nods.

“Not just for this, but for everything.” He clarifies.

“I know.” She tells him. This is the moment where, if he were actually in front of her, she’d kiss him. But he’s not. Instead she just tells him, “I’m still going to punch you tomorrow.”

He has the nerve to just wink. “I accept my fate.”

(She really does punch him when he finishes the descent the next day, but it’s half hearted and only in the arm and it’s followed by a kiss so long that they both almost pass our from oxygen depravation.)


	49. A True Professional

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crack!fic: Bellamy come into Clarke's hospital with an, ahem, less than comfortable situation after Murphy slips him a couple of Viagara.

Clarke tries to make a point to detach herself from her patients as much as possible. She learned early on in her residency that it can be crucial in making sure she’s able to make the best objective decisions. It’s also what allows her to _not_ breakdown in laughter when she’s handed a chart that tells her that her next patient “accidentally” took a mild overdose of Viagra and has had a stubborn erection for almost 12 hours.

It’s not like Clarke has a picture in mind for what a chemically-induced priapism patient should look like, but if she did it would certainly _not_ be Bellamy Blake, if only because he’s so far south of sixty. He’s half-sitting, half-lounging on the hospital bed, with one arm thrown over his face seemingly doing his best to minimize the obviousness of his apparently never-ending boner, despite it being the very reason he’s there.

“Mr. Blake,” Clarke greets, politely keeping her gaze on his chart rather than his lap, “my name is Dr. Griffin. I’ll be treating you today.” Clarke runs through the vitals and basic stats on his chart from what the nurse had taken. Other than the aforementioned unfortunate excess southern-flowing blood, he seems to be healthy enough.

“Great, nice to meet you and all. Can we just get this over with?” Bellamy Blake groans from the bed. He sounds like he’s in a lot of pain, which isn’t entirely surprising.

It’s only Clarke’s professionalism – already hanging by a thread before she even walked into the room – that keeps her from cracking a smile. “Before we ‘get this over with’ as you say, I need a little more information from you. Can you tell me more about the circumstances surrounding your apparent accidental Viagara overuse? It’s important that you’re honest so that we can treat you properly.”

Another long-suffering sigh. “There’s some kind of law, right? Doctor-patient confidentiality? As in, anything that I say to you in this room, about this situation and its surrounding circumstances, you are bound by oath to keep between us?”

Now Clarke breaks, lips curling into a grin as she decides she’s finally feeling level-headed enough to give him another once over. “Yes. I promise that I’m only interested in treating you, Mr. Blake.”

As soon as she gets her eyes back on him she realizes that she just outright lied to the poor guy. He’s sitting up a bit more, arm awkwardly arranged in his lap rather than over his face so that Clarke is now hit with the full force of his puppy dog eyes, tousled curls and freckles. She has to swallow down the urge to correct herself and tell him that she’s decidedly far more interested in finding something to _do_ with his, ahem, problem rather than curing it medically.

“A couple of my friends might have decided that I was in desperate need of getting laid and they, for some reason, decided that _this_ ” he lifts his arm to gesture at the practically literal elephant in the room and Clarke’s professionalism goes running as her jaw drops, “was the solution. They crushed up a couple of little blue pills and put them in my dinner last night at the bar when I walked away.”

It takes Clarke a moment to bounce back from _how the hell could this guy be in need of an intervention to get laid?!_ “I, um,” Clarke clears her throat. “How many is a couple, Mr. Blake?”

“Don’t know. Murphy said one, which probably means two or three.” He leans back on the table, putting his weight in his hands. Apparently, the new position brings him some kind of relief, given the ridiculous porn star moan he lets out. The ridiculousness doesn’t stop Clarke’s eyes from snapping back to his lap.

When her eyes move back to his face, he’s grinning. Like he knows that Clarke’s not giving him a medically-related once over. “So you want to see it, right?” He asks, one eyebrow raised.

Clarke actually _feels_ the blood rushing to her cheeks.

She forces herself to grind out a semi-normal sounding, “I suppose I should see what we’re dealing with here. Then we can talk about treatment.”

“Dr. Griffin.” Bellamy says, grabbing her wrist as she reaches for the hem of his gown. “I think I’d like to see another doctor.”

Clarke jumps back. “I’m sorry, did I do something to make you feel uncomfortable?” Thoughts of malpractice and sexual harassment fly through her head.

“No, actually, see I’d love to go to dinner with you this weekend and I think that’s frowned upon for doctors and patients. There’s also the little matter of, if you do decide to go to dinner with me, and it goes well, I’d rather this not be your first impression of little Bell.”

“Oh, dear God, no.”

He blanches, then. “Did I misread this? In which case, I’d still like another doctor so that I don’t die of mortification…”

“No!” Clarke shakes her head hard enough to send her hair flying. “No. I mean. Yes. I mean. Damn, this shouldn’t be so hard. Let me start over. Yes, it is frowned upon for doctors and patients to date. Yes, dinner does sound good. No, please tell me you didn’t name your penis ‘little Bell.’”

“Is it a deal breaker on the date?” He asks, grin back in full force.

“Yes.”

“Then absolutely not. I don’t know where you think you heard that.” He winks. _Winks._ “So, about that date, Dr. Griffin?”

Clarke ducks her head for a moment before nodding and pulling at his arm. She scrawls her number along the skin on the inside of his forearm. “Call me Clarke.”

“Clarke.” He lets the name roll over his tongue – it sounds good in his voice. “If you ever wind up meeting Murphy, you and I met in a book store in a moment that was completely independent of this horror show.”


	50. That's Not My Name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The cute barista keeps getting Bellamy's name wrong when he orders. It becomes a thing.

As Octavia got older, Bellamy thought life would get easier, but sometimes he thinks it’s the opposite. Now that she’s a senior, he’s dealing with her regular schooling on top of figuring out how to pay for college and helping her figure out the whole application process. Then there’s that matter of him now being in his second year of grad school, with means his thesis is in full swing and he’s no longer just TAing, but running his own seminar, too.

Most days it’s a miracle if he sleeps more than four or five hours.

So when a new coffee shop opens up directly on his route between school and home, he nearly weeps with happiness. He’s there at least once a day. It’s easy, much cheaper than the big chains and really damn good. But there’s something weird going on.

The first couple of times he goes, it’s empty – probably because it’s new and it’s not Starbucks – so the barista makes his drink and hands it straight to him. After a few weeks, though, it gets crazy and they start using the whole system where they write your name on the cup and then whoever actually winds up making your drink calls it out.

The first time, his name gets written as “BLARMEY” and, okay, he’s willing to let that one slide. It was busy and sort of loud. Plus It sounds _kind of_ like Bellamy, and he’s willing to admit that his name is weird.

The next time, his name is written “BLIMEY.” It’s not as busy that day, but he’s in too big of a rush to really care.

It devolves from there. Bellamy learns quickly to just start listening for weird words that start with a B and just check to make sure it’s a large cup. Odds are it’s his. He tries to believe that the barista at the register is just busy. Just hears the B and, when she doesn’t hear it immediately followed by “randon” or “rian,” just makes the rest up. Maybe she just likes to have fun with it. 

“BILOXI”

“BOSNIA”

“BALLYHOO”

“BREXIT”

“BAGELS”

“BOMBASTIC”

But then it gets weirder. Words that sound far too much like “Bellamy” to be coincidental.

“BELLACISM”

“BELOMANCY”

“BELONEPHILIA”

It’s like this girl – because it _is_ the same blonde who takes his order every morning – has purposefully looked up a bunch of words that sound like “Bellamy,” but aren’t even close. There’s no way that the average person knows these words. (They are words, though. Bellamy googled them.) The thing is, whenever she’s _not_ there, it’s usually correct.

It’s the blonde. Has to be.

Once Bellamy makes the connection, it’s game on. The next time he orders from her, he tells her his name is Barry Allen. The pauses with the tip of the marker on the cup and her eyes snap back to his. She squints at him, pursing her lips before finally huffing and scrawling a name on the cup. Five minutes later, another barista is calling out “Flash.”

Bellamy grins when he grabs his coffee.

It becomes a thing.

Every time Clarke is at the register – because after weeks of ordering from her, Bellamy has finally thought to look at her own name tag – he gives her a new name and gets downright giddy to see her response.

“Peter Parker” comes back as “Spiderman.” 

“Bruce Wayne” comes back as “Alfred’s BFF.” 

“Sean Cassidy” comes back as “Banshee…or maybe that guy who sings ‘Do You Believe in Magic?’” 

“Lord Voldemort” comes back as “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.”

It goes on for _months_. By Spring, he’s grinning every time he walks into the coffee shop and he knows that when Clarke sees him come up to the counter, she can’t help but smile, too. So much of his life these days is chaotic and stressful. It’s nice to have these few minutes a day of whimsy.

“Large black coffee?” Clarke asks him one day in March. Same as always.

“Yes, please.”

Clarke nods, reaches far to the side to pick up the cup. “Name?” She asks, marker at the ready.

“Remy LeBeau.”

Clarke nods, marker flicking along the side of the cup before handing it down the line. Bellamy strolls down to the other end of the counter and waits, tapping his fingers in a lazy beat along the wood. Today, when his coffee is finished, the guy at the end of the line turns the cup to read off the name and just sighs. “Dude who always has weird names on his cup?” He asks, eyes landing on Bellamy.

“That’d be me, I guess.” Bellamy tells him with a shrug. He was pretty confident that Clarke would get Gambit. It wasn’t even a hard one.

“Good luck with that.” The guy tells him as he hands over the coffee.

Bellamy nearly drops the hot drink when he gets his hand on it. The cup _does_ say Gambit – in tiny little letters at the bottom. The rest of the backside cup is covered in Clarke’s scrawl, albeit a bit smaller and written in pen instead of marker. It takes Bellamy a minute to even find the beginning.

_It took me two weeks to get your attention. Bellamy, FIVE MONTHS of flirting via coffee cups and comic book knowledge is ridiculous. Just ask me out already. I promise I’ll say yes. Probably.” It’s signed ‘Gambit’ with a heart._

Bellamy just stares at it for a long moment before setting it back on the counter. He bounds back to the register, cutting in front of at least four other people in line. He doesn’t really care. Waiting in line to ask out the cute, comic book nerd barista doesn’t seem like a romantic gesture.

“Hi, I’m Bellamy.” He extends his hand over the counter. “B-e-l-l-a-m-y.”

Clarke grins, shaking his hand. “I’m Clarke. I’m not going to spell it for you because it’s on my name tag and also that’s stupid.”

“What are you doing Friday night, Clarke?”

Clarke hums, brows drawing down like she’s in thought. “I’m not sure, you know, I’m really a very busy person.”

Bellamy sighs, brings a hand to scrub down his face. “Will you have dinner with me?”

“Oh, gosh, well, I don’t even really know you.” Bellamy just glares at her. She really should’ve figured out by now that he’s a terrible flirt, so it shouldn’t be a surprise. “Alright. Dinner, Friday.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUYS I MADE IT!!! 50 chapters!! It only took me, you know, like nine months instead of 50 days, but still!
> 
> Just because we made it to magic 50 doesn't mean I'm done though. :)


	51. Christmas Eve Puppy Pile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been a tradition for years, but somehow Bellamy and Clarke are the only two who show up to this year's Christmas Even puppy pile. It's only awkward if they make it awkward, right?

The Christmas Eve puppy pile.

It’s been a Blake family tradition for as long as Bellamy can remember. At first, he and his mom would sleep together on Christmas Eve. They’d drink hot cocoa before bed, eat cookies and get into bed without even brushing their teeth and they’d wear their silly Christmas pajamas. By Octavia’s second Christmas, she had joined in, too. Even once their mother was gone, they kept it up.

When Octavia was in high school, she started picking up strays – people who didn’t have anywhere else to go for the holidays. People who Bellamy and Octavia might’ve been if they didn’t at least have each other. (The familiarity of that loneliness made it hard to say no.) Her sophomore year, Clarke joined the pile – not because she didn’t have a family, but because being at the Blake’s felt more like home to her in two short years than the Griffin mansion ever did.

She showed up for Christmas eve dinner with gifts tucked under her arm and her hands stuffed in the pockets of her Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer onesie and her eyes trained on the ground. “You’re sure you guys don’t mind?” She asks and it’s uncharacteristically shy from what Bellamy knows of her.

“The more the merrier.” Bellamy tells her and it feels more like honesty than he was expecting. “Come on in. We can’t eat cookies for dinner if we don’t make them first.”

For the next few years it’s just them and Bellamy doesn’t mind that their tradition hasn’t grown. They’ve only got a queen sized bed and having three fully-grown people in it is already less than comfortable when you’re trying to keep your hands from accidentally finding inappropriate places on your sister. Or her best friend.

And then Octavia goes to college and suddenly, with the holiday travel costs, the Blake apartment is bursting at the seems. The first year they add Jasper and Monty to the puppy pile. Fortunately, it also means that they add Monty’s moonshine to the pile and so Bellamy doesn’t quite mind waking up with his limbs all tangled with the other four.

Last year he begrudgingly allowed Lincoln to come, but Miller wound up stuck with them that year, too, because of a blizzard. It’s enough reinforcements that he’s able to keep a solid two bodies in between Octavia and her boyfriend through the night. (Though with seven people in the queen bed he does wake up with someone else’s elbow in his mouth.) It’s also a miracle that the bedframe doesn’t break. Bellamy makes a mental note on Christmas morning to send some kind of letter to the manufacturer to commend them on their solid construction.

He starts baking early this year, knowing that there’ll be so many people milling about soon. Not to mention, surprisingly, when you eat nothing but cookies for dinner you can go through some pretty major quantities of cookies. He’s almost finished rolling out the first batch of gingerbread when he gets a text from Jasper.

**“Hey man, Maya’s family invited me last minute. Hope you don’t mind I’m bailing on tradition.”**

Bellamy just shrugs it off and shoots back a quick, **“No problem. Merry Christmas.”** One less body in the bed actually sounds like a relief.

He wasn’t expecting Miller this year anyway, what with there not being a blizzard and all, so he’s not expecting the text that comes from him mid-way through mixing the sugar cookies. It says, **“Guess who schemed with Papa Miller and surprised me by coming home for the holidays?”** There’s a selfie attached of a beaming Miller and a sheepish-looking Monty in the airport.

“Huh.” Bellamy’s happy for them, really. After months of pining they finally got their heads out of their asses early in the fall. They deserve this. But it also means he’s left with just him, Clarke, Octavia, and Lincoln. Running interference isn’t going to be as easy as he’d like.

Bellamy taps out a simple, **”Happy for you, man.”** and sends it along with a little thumbs up. He stares down at the cookie dough in his bowl, then looks at the five dozen cookies already cooling on his counter. It feels like overkill now, but he already started, so he sets to work on finishing the batch.

Twenty minutes later Clarke shows up. She lets herself in nowadays, but Bellamy sees her floating by the kitchen with an armful of presents that towers over her head, still wearing the same Rudolph onesie from high school. From here, he can even see the little red heart on her ass. It might’ve drawn his attention as far back as the first year, but he doesn’t feel as guilty about staring at it now.

“Smells good.” She comments as she drops down to place the presents under the tree. “Ready to feed an army, Blake?”

Bellamy huffs a short laugh. “Not quite an army this year, actually. Jasper got a last-minute invite to Maya’s family’s dinner.”

Clarke wanders into the kitchen and snatches one of the freshly baked cookies, not caring that it’s probably going to scald her mouth. “Oh yeah, I’ve heard him talking about that thing. Apparently it’s kind of a big deal. The whole town comes together and eats together at the high school or something. Oh! And Monty was going to surprise Miller, too. He has a ticket to go home with him tonight.”

“Did everyone know about that but me?”

“Well, you can’t exactly keep a secret, Blake.” Clarke reaches up on her toes to ruffle his hair affectionately.

“That’s not true.” He grumbles.

“So is.” She taunts, going as far as to stick her tongue out at him. “Anyway, where’s O? Shouldn’t she be here?”

“She was working a shift at the restaurant. She should be here soon.”

Clarke nearly spits out the cookie. “On Christmas Eve?”

Bellamy shrugs. “Pays double time. Who am I to tell her not to do that?”

Bellamy’s phone blares from the counter, cutting Clarke off just as she opens her mouth. “Octavia.” She tells him before picking up. “Hey O – yeah, I just got here. No way. Really? Are you sure?” There’s a long pause before she finally says, “Okay, well, I can’t wait to see you, but I make no guarantees there’ll be any cookies left.”

“Don’t even tell me.” Bellamy groans.

Clarke’s eyes are sympathetic when she looks at him, soft in that way that makes him want to hug her. “She’s working later than she expected. She said to get on with the festivities without her. She’ll swing by Lincoln’s on her way here and we’ll at least be able to do Christmas morning with them.”

“No. Bullshit!” Bellamy throws his spoon into the sink harder than is strictly necessary. He pretends not to see the way Clarke jumps a bit. “She thinks I’m not going to wait up for her?”

“Bell,” Clarke coos, voice as soft as her eyes as she reaches out and lays a hand on his shoulder. “They’re not even closing until midnight. She probably won’t be home until at least 1. Besides, we all know what an old man you are. If you make it to eleven, we’ll be lucky.” She has the gall to wink and bump him with her hip.

“Yeah, alright, fine.” He relents. “Come on, then.”

They spend two hours gorging themselves on cookies and watching the holiday classics. It’s the same line up it was when Bellamy was a kid, really – A Charlie Brown Christmas, Rudolph, The Year Without a Santa Claus. All the good stuff. (He had to fight hard three years ago when Clarke tried to get Die Hard included in the rotation, but he eventually won after a month-long standoff.)

He doesn’t really think about it until they’re both staring at his bed later. “We don’t have to do this, you know.” Bellamy offers, hand coming up to scratch at the back of his neck.

“Sure we do. It’s a Blake family tradition!” Clarke counters, pulling down his comforter looking like she feels right at home.

“Yeah, well, only one of us is a Blake.”

“I resent that, you know.” Clarke pouts up at him as she hops onto the bed. “Come on then, Mr. Officially a Blake. We’ve been doing this for years. It’s no big deal.”

“Right, yeah. No big deal.” Saying out loud doesn’t quite convince him, but he climbs into the other side anyway.

Bellamy spends a couple of minutes trying his best to stay on the edge of his side of the mattress. It’s stiff, awkward, and crazy uncomfortable. At this rate, he’s pretty confident that he _will_ still be up when Octavia gets home. Eventually, he feels the mattress shift as Clarke rolls toward him. She tugs on the side of his Santa Suit pajamas until he scoots in a few inches, then just plasters herself to his side, one arm stretched across his chest, one leg tucked between his, the top of her head settled into the crook of her arm so that her hair is tickling his chin.

It feels like years before he hears her voice, whispered words floating up to him through the dark, “It’s not a puppy pile without cuddling, right?”

They’ve definitely never cuddle liked this before. Not just Bellamy and Clarke. There has never been any cuddling of this variety on Christmas Even. Bellamy considers, if for only the briefest of moments, pointing it out. In the end, he likes the way it feels to have her nestled into him like this. It’s warm and she smells like the gingerbread and whipped cream that she’s consumed in mass quantities tonight. Not to mention, it feels kind of nice just to hold someone.

Bellamy wakes up in stages on Christmas morning. The first thing he notices is that he’s not nearly as squished as he has been every Christmas morning for the last few years. Immediately secondary to that is noticing that he’s still not alone. As soon as she starts squirming awake, Bellamy recalls the previous night and recognizes that it’s Clarke he’s got pressed up against him, and a quick glance tells him that they’re still alone.

“Merry Christmas.” She tells him, head burrowing deeper into his shoulder and dammit if he didn’t forget how cute she sounds early in the morning, voice still groggy and raspy.

“Merry Christmas to you too, princess.”

Clarke rolls away then, stretching until her joints pop before sitting up. When she looks back down at him, she giggles. In all these years, Bellamy’s not sure that he’s _ever_ heard Clarke giggle. He raises an eyebrow at her, waiting for an explanation when she leans down and presses her lips against his.

It’s far from how he imagined his first kiss with Clarke might go. For starters, neither of them have brushed their teeth since, well, yesterday morning. His lips are chapped from sleeping and she takes him by such surprise that he doesn’t really do anything more than lay there before she pulls back.

“What was…?” He starts to ask, but she reaches over his head and comes back with one of those fake mistletoe bunches. That definitely wasn’t there when they fell asleep. “Octavia?” He questions.

“Maybe. Don’t know. Don’t really care. Do you?” She bats her eyelashes at him at little and in that moment, despite the fact that her hair’s a tangled mess and there’s a giant reindeer face staring back at him from her chest, he thinks she’s probably never looked better.

“No.” He says with conviction, plucking the plastic mistletoe from her fingers and tossing it across the room. He reaches out then, wrapping her up in his arms, pulling her back into his chest so that he can give her a proper kiss (morning breath and all). It’s still not anything like he imagined it might be, but it’s better this time. He ~~likes~~ loves the way Clarke’s fingers snag in his knotted hair, the way she gasps quietly into his mouth when he sinks his teeth into her lower lip.

When he pulls back this time her cheeks are flushed and she’s looking at him a little goofy. “Thank God for your sister. I thought I was going to have to do this Love Actually style at this point. Pull out some giant cue cards for you to get it through your thick skull. Maybe on New Year’s.”

“Please don’t insult me while I’m in the middle of kissing you.” Bellamy murmurs, leaning back for another kiss.

Clarke pushes on his shoulders until he let’s her breath again. “I’m fairly certain that you like me _because_ I’m the kind of girl who’ll insult you while you’re kissing me.”

Bellamy grins, because she’s not wrong. “Jeez, what does that say about me?”

“Only great things, I’m sure. I should thank your sister later.”

“Wait, Octavia. If she’s home and she’s not…do I even want to look in her bedroom right now?”

It’s Clarke’s turn to grin. “Not unless you’d like to see a similar scene play out between her and Lincoln.”

He’s sure that Clarke can see the fire in his eyes at the thought because she climbs fully on top of him, keeping him pressed into the mattress. “Slow your roll, macho man. You owe her one.” It’s always been a little difficult to say no to Clarke, but having her sitting on his hips certainly doesn’t make it any easier. (By the time they all emerge for Christmas morning traditions, it’s already after noon.)


	52. Wait For It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 5 times that Bellamy and Clarke touched without thinking about it and the 1 time that they realized what it might mean.

1\. The Diner: Fall 2016

It’s Sunday morning. Or, well, actually it’s after noon, but Clarke’s only just woken up, so it feels like morning still. The six of them – Clarke, Bellamy, Octavia, Jasper, Miller, and Monty – have only just managed to drag themselves to the diner down the block. (Lincoln, for his part as annoyingly responsible adult-like human, nearly skipped along beside them.)

This doesn’t happen often, but last night was Octavia’s 21st birthday and she coerced them into drinking to such excess that Clarke actually thinks this might be more of a “still kind of drunk” brunch for her than a “hangover” brunch. The waitress takes one look at the lot of them, all squished into their normal corner booth, half of them with their hands down on the table and sashays back with three pitchers of water and seven glass. “Drink.” She orders.

Five minutes later, Clarke has drunk enough water to fill a bathtub and feels no better for it; only bloated. She kicks off her shoes, propriety be damned, and runs her sock-clad foot down the pole in the center of the table, kicking at it randomly, to give herself something else to concentrate on.

Clarke doesn’t know how much time passes before she hears Octavia groaning loudly. It wouldn’t be enough to get her attention, except it sounds very far away and she doesn’t remember Octavia ever getting up. When she finally scrapes together enough energy to lift her head from her hands, she sees Octavia standing in the middle of the diner gawking at her.

“Come on, Griffin. If you’re going to play footsie with my brother, wait until I’m not around. Or you know, at least wait until I’m not so hung over and grumpy.” She scolds as she comes back to the booth.

Clarke grunts a sound that is close to “what?” She eyes up Bellamy across the table and sees that his face has gone red. She peeks under the table and – after her head has stopped spinning from the sudden change in orientation – notices that, yeah, she was definitely not running her foot over the pole in the middle of the table. She was running her foot against Bellamy’s leg the entire time.

2\. Scary Movie: Winter 2015

“I hate you. You’re aware of that, right?” Clarke throws a seething look toward Bellamy.

He scoffs. “This is a great movie. It’s a classic! You can’t hate classics.”

“You know I hate _all_ of your stupid suspense, horror, awful mind fuck movies. It wasn’t even your turn to pick. It was supposed to be Octavia’s turn. I was supposed to be watching a cheesy rom-com right now, you know.”

Bellamy laughs and just reaches behind his back to turn off the light. “Octavia’s not here and I’m her next of kin. Clearly the responsibility fell to me. Now shut up, you’re going to miss the big climax.”

Clarice is currently traipsing around through the serial killer’s house and Clarke just _knows_ that she’s about to die. Buffalo Bill has just cut the lights when Bellamy asks, “You trying to bruise me in retaliation, princess?”

When she looks down she realizes that she’s somehow scooted closer to him and has locked his forearm in a death grip. “Oh, no. Sorry, I just – “ Clarke cuts herself off with a squeal as gunshots sound on the screen.

3\. The Election Fall: 2016

“If you keep cracking your knuckles so hard you’re liable to wind up breaking a finger.” Bellamy nods at Clarke, who’s still ringing her hands.

“You know that’s not –“ she starts, cutting herself off with a shake of her head. “I’m just nervous.”

“Are you worried that she won’t get re-elected? Or that she will?” Bellamy’s eyes flick back to the screen where the newscaster comments on the latest polling data.

“Yes.” Clarke answers wryly, a grin on her face.

He finds an answering grin on his own face as he says, “It’s not like Senator Griffin has done any major damage to the country yet.”

“Yet, Blake. Yet is the operative word.” She turns back to the TV, brows drawn tight again.

Before he can second guess himself, he brings his arm up to the back of the couch hand coming to rest at the back of Clarke’s neck so that he can sweep his thumb along the tension he finds there. “It’s going to be fine.”

“I hope you’re right.”

4\. Long Day: Spring 2017

Bellamy is in the middle of a great book when he hears the door slam open, which really isn’t surprising. “Today was the worst!” It’s Clarke’s voice that bounces off the apartment walls, though, instead of Octavia’s. That _does_ surprise him.

“You know you don’t live here, right?” Bellamy yells back, even though Clarke really might as well be listed on their lease. 

_She’s had a key for going on five years now. Bellamy gave her one not even a year after they’d met. Clarke had been Octavia’s host student when she visited the local university in high school for an overnight prospective student’s weekend. They hit it off and soon enough Clarke was spending more time at the Blake’s apartment than in her own dorm – popping by when Octavia wasn’t even home yet and staying long after she’d left sometimes._

_She’d always had this sad, sort of hollow look in her eyes back then and when she was sitting on their patched up couch, she looked a little more whole. He tossed a key her way during her Spring Break when she was sleeping on their couch and never thought twice about it._

“You know I don’t like you, right?” She shoots back in that high, nasally voice that means she’s (badly) mocking him. “Just for that, I’m eating your fancy chocolate.”

“Like you’d even know where to find it.” Bellamy snorts, but he does place his book face down on the coffee table, eyes tracking Clarke as she disappears into the kitchen.

“Tucked into the perpetual bag of frozen peas in the back of the freezer.” She calls out to him, words garbled – clearly around the cayenne, extra dark chocolate she’s just stolen. “Octavia would never look through the vegetables for your stash.”

When she finally makes her way into the living room, she does look pretty haggard, so Bellamy lets it slide. “Great day with the kiddos?”

“They were just so squirrely. It’s the October insanity settling in.” Clarke lets out a frustrated groan and flops onto the couch opposite of Bellamy. “Christian told me I was a bad teacher.”

“Ah, come on, Clarke. They’re kids. You can’t let them get to you. They say stuff they don’t mean all the time for no reason at all.”

Clarke let’s her head fall back against the couch, eyes squeezing shut. “You say it like you have experience.”

He grins at her. “I did raise Octavia. No one knows how to knock you down a few pegs with just a couple of words quite like my little sister.”

“Wow, you must really feel bad for me.”

“What makes you say that?”

Clarke gestures to his lap – where he’s got one of her feet in his lap as he kneads at the other one with both of his thumbs. He didn’t even consciously think about doing it, actually. “Yeah, well, you did look pretty tense.”

“Thanks, Bell. The world could use a few more men like you.”

5\. Game Night: Summer 2017 

Game Night. The once a month monstrosity that’s always fun and games (literally) until someone starts losing. Last November’s game night ended in literal tears. After last June’s Taboo debacle, Jasper got drunk and set the cards on fire in a bizarre trashcan bonfire. After one particularly nasty Pictionary debacle, Murphy even punched a hole in Clarke’s wall – she made him repair it to her specifications _and_ buy her a six pack for her trouble.

At various points in the last couple of years, petitions have been made to cancel game night forever. Somehow, they keep getting turned down. (It probably has something to do with the sacred Game Night by laws stating a need for a unanimous decision…)

This month is Cards Against Humanity at the Blake’s.

Clarke is late, so when she finally gets inside, all of the seats are already taken. Octavia, Lincoln and Monty are all squished on the loveseat – Octavia lounging over the two guys. Murphy, Fox and Miller have all taken the couch. Bellamy’s sitting in the reclining chair he sometimes likes to refer to as his throne and Jasper and Maya have already taken the two good kitchen chairs.

Given that the only other option is to sit on the floor or one of the stools that make her back ache, Clarke doesn’t think much of plopping herself sideways in Bellamy’s lap in the recliner. It’s not like they’ve never been this close before, though usually they’re drunk. Bellamy clearly doesn’t think much of it, shifting around and bringing his hands to her waist to resituate her until they’re both comfortable. He keeps one hand curled over her knee.

Clarke doesn’t realize the rest of the room has gone silent until Murphy goes, “You’re kidding me, right? No one else thinks this is weird?”

The awkward silence continues and, when Clarke looks up, she sees almost every pair of eyes in the room trained on her and Bellamy. For his part, Bellamy just keeps scrolling through a long chain of emails on his phone. “You say something, Murphy?” He asks off hand.

Murphy sighs and takes a long sip from his beer. “Guess we’re still pretending not to notice this, then.”

It’s definitely one of the most awkward game nights they’ve ever had, but no one cries and no one damages any property, so it doesn’t even make it into the top five worst game nights.

+1. Last Day of Summer: Summer 2017

The last person Bellamy is expecting to see knocking on his door is Clarke. For starters, she has a key. It’s also felt a little like she’s been avoiding him for the last couple of weeks. Then there’s the fact that it’s the last day of her summer break. Clarke’s made a point of spending the last day of summer break in complete solitude for the last two year’s and had been looking forward to it all summer, so he’s not sure why she’d break that now.

“I’ve been thinking.” Clarke tells him, making no move to come inside from the hallway.

“Hope you didn’t hurt yourself.” He teases.

“Shut up, I’m being serious, here.” Normally, he thinks she might smack him, but she doesn’t. “I’ve been thinking about how I don’t think about you anymore; you know? Not – not like that. It’s more like I don’t need to actually _think_ about you, or around you. You’re comfortable. And I’m thinking that maybe since I stopped _thinking_ I didn’t really notice that-“ She sighs, lets her head fall for a moment before looking back up at him. “I’m not exactly sure what I’m trying to say, but all I know is I haven’t been able to stop _thinking_ about you for the last couple of weeks and even though all I’ve wanted to do all summer is spend this day all alone, I couldn’t stop wanting to be where you are.”

Bellamy purses his lips and studies her for a moment. “That’s a lot of thinking, but _I_ think I’m not sure what you’re really saying, either.”

Clarke jerks forward then, throwing her arms around his neck and raising onto her tip toes so that she can press her lips to his. Bellamy’s so shocked by it that he does little besides hang onto her. She pulls back just far enough so that her face comes into focus and speaks again. “I think maybe somewhere along the lines I started treating you more like my boyfriend than my friend and I think I like the way we work together. I think that maybe I want the benefits, too, though.”

Bellamy’s answering laugh bounces off the bare walls of the hallway and seems to echo around them. It’s not until Clarke backs away, shoulders hunching inward that he realizes she might be taking it the wrong way. “If you want to ask me out, princess, all you need to do is ask. You don’t need to _woo_ me. If you haven’t noticed, you’ve already got me.”

“Oh.” Clarke breathes, cheeks blushing pink as she tries to hold in a grin.

“Now can we try that again? I promise I live up to my reputation when I’m not frozen by surprise.”

It’s easy, once he has permission, to fold Clarke into his arms. After all, she’s spent a lot of time there over the years and she fits so perfectly against him – soft against him in all the right places. It still feels different somehow, knowing that she lets herself go pliant against him not because she’s had a long day, or because she’s sick or over-worked. It’s just because she wants to and she can.


	53. The Wastelands Update!!

Sorry to fake you out. No new chapter!! I just know that a lot of folks who are following this one were interested in the Wastelands AU, and the first chapter of the official fic has just been posted [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8899546)!

The original three mini-fics are going to keep living here temporarily, but they're not going to be 100% accurate to the full fic, so eventually they'll be deleted to prevent confusion.

Yay!! I'm super excited about this one, so thanks for your continuing support! Love you all! <3


	54. Blame it on the...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 5 times Bellamy comes up with an excuse to kiss Clarke, and 1 time he doesn't need to. (Re-post of a one-shot, just cleaning up my works.)

**1.**

Bellamy hates hockey. 

Actually, Bellamy just hates _sports_ in general, but people always look at him like they’re checking for secret boobs when he says it like that, so he usually resigns himself to lamenting the stupidity of one sport at a time. Today it’s hockey.

Clarke, on the other hand, can’t get enough hockey. (“It’s clearly the best sport ever. It’s fast-paced and low-scoring, requires teamwork and individual athleticism. There’s even guys punching guys! Jesus, Bellamy, what’s wrong with you?”)

He’d say he doesn’t know how she got him to come to this game, but that’d be a lie. She was wearing one of his old threadbare undershirts that she’d stolen back in high school, all splattered with paint and eyes bright and excited as she brandished the tickets, asking him to come with her. He couldn’t say no to her like that. Come to think of it, he can’t say no to her _ever_.

So now Bellamy’s sitting in this stupidly uncomfortable _plastic_ chair watching two teams that he couldn’t name even if he tried as they chase a puck around the ice. His seat is, for the record, far too close to the potentially-getting-hit-in-the-face-with-a-puck zone for his comfort.

Clarke sits next to him, nearly out of her own stupidly uncomfortable _plastic_ chair as she yells at the players. She’s swearing like a sailor, uncaring of the horrified child staring at her from two rows down. He spares a moment to wonder whether or not he should feel concerned that he finds it extremely hot, then decides he doesn’t really care.

He’s just considering whether or not it would be worth it to go buy himself another bag of popcorn, if for nothing else than to keep his mouth and hands busy for another twenty minutes, when the game pauses for a commercial break. Clarke sits back in her seat panting like she’s been playing in the game herself.

She turns to him with pure joy in her eyes. “God, Bell, isn’t this the best?”

“If you’re happy, I’m happy.” He tells her honestly, taking advantage of the break to sling an arm around her shoulder.

They sit in companionable silence, watching and laughing at the unsuspecting couples who wind up on the Kiss Cam. The whole stadium groans in unison for a guy who leans in to the girl next to him on the screen, only for her to turn and give him her cheek at the last second. Both of them are bright red before the camera flashes to the next couple.

Clarke and Bellamy both jump when they realize that it’s _their faces_ up on the screen. Bellamy swallows thickly, hoping the anxiety doesn’t show in his eyes before he turns to Clarke. She’s already facing him, grinning broadly before she lets her lips part slightly and leans into him. When their lips connect Bellamy feels like a piece of his soul shifts into place.

He’s knows he might never get this chance again, so even as the whole stadium erupts in cheers, he uses the hand already on Clarke’s shoulder to cradle the back of her head, tilting her slightly so that he can get a better angle on the kiss. He sucks gently on her lower lip, lets his teeth come into play to scrape along the soft flesh as he pulls away.

When they part, he’s scared to open his eyes, afraid of what he might find on Clarke’s face. It must only be a few seconds, but eventually she flicks him in the nose and he has to open his eyes. She’s grinning at him again, blonde hair slightly more tousled than it was before, looking like an angel.

“Way to give them a show, Blake.” She nudges his side with her elbow in the way she knows is ticklish and then that’s it. The kiss that may have literally shifted Bellamy’s soul seems to have had zero effect on both Clarke and their friendship.

He settles back in for the next few minutes of gameplay, content in the knowledge that at least he knows what it’s like to kiss Clarke Griffin.

______________________________________________________________

**2.**

Bellamy thought he could go back to life as normal with Clarke after the kiss at the hockey game. After all, he’s been in love with her for close to eight years. If he could go eight years without kissing her, he can go another eight now. It shouldn’t _change_ just because he’s experience it once, right?

Wrong.

Now that Bellamy knows the taste of Clarke’s lips, he’s _obsessed_ with trying to find another excuse to kiss her. He knows she doesn’t feel the same way, so he can’t just up and kiss her. A kiss isn’t worth losing his best friend.

But if he can find another way to kiss her without having anything change? Something innocuous like the Kiss Cam? He’d jump on it in a second.

Octavia comes home for Spring Break two months after the Kiss Cam incident and he finds the perfect opening. He, Octavia, Clarke, Wick, Raven, Lincoln, Jasper, Monty and Miller are all crowded into Bellamy and Octavia’s living room, sitting on the floor, a little tipsy on Monty’s homemade moonshine when Octavia jumps to her feet. “I declare it’s time for Kings!”

Everyone grumbles. It’s not that they dislike Kings, it’s more like every time they play at least one person winds up puking and subsequently horrifically hung over the next day. There’s no such thing as a “social” drinking game with Monty’s moonshine. But it’s the first time Octavia’s been home in two months, so no one can say no to her.

It’s not like Bellamy _plans_ this, but when he pulls a King on his second card, it just sort of pops into his head. “If you say anyone’s name – nicknames included – you have to kiss them.”

It’s far from the weirdest rule that’s ever been created in Kings. One memorable night two years ago when Jasper pre-gamed the gathering, he declared that should anyone use a word with the letter s in it, they had to lick the refrigerator. Over Christmas break, Octavia declared that if two people looked each other in the eye they had to trade an article of clothing.

Point being, no one even bats an eye at Bellamy’s rule. But now he has a plan. Well, half a plan. Half of a semi-drunken plan. It’s going to work, though. He’s going to kiss Clarke before the night is up.

If there’s one thing that Clarke does often, it’s yell Bellamy’s name in a variety of angry tones. She can convey entire paragraphs of speech with just the inflection of her voice as she says his name. ( ~~It’s one of his favorite things.~~ )

He starts by purposefully drinking from _Clarke’s_ cup, rather than his own, on his next turn. She opens her mouth and gets as far as “Be-“ before she cuts herself off, slapping her hand over her mouth and glaring at him. It’s so close to “Bell” that he can nearly taste her lips on his.

In the next round, Wick shamelessly uses Bellamy’s rule as an excuse to make out with Raven, and Bellamy can see the wheels turn in Miller’s head as he debates whether or not he can use it as an excuse to kiss Monty for the first time. He doesn’t. Monty accidentally says Jasper’s name, but is good-natured about planting a peck on his friend’s lips. Raven accidentally says Octavia’s name and makes a show of kissing his sister thoroughly enough that he has to look away.

As more cards get picked up, Bellamy decides that it’s time to pull out the big guns. The odds are getting dangerously high of a new king being picked up with each turn and he can’t risk losing this opportunity. He inconspicuously slips his socks off so that his feet are bare, and then “accidentally” stretches his legs too far so that his bare toes touch Clarke’s legs.

“Bellamy!” She shouts, nearly jumping out of her skin. (Clarke hates all feet, but there’s nothing she hates more than _Bellamy’s_ feet.

“Ooh!” Octavia teases, pointing accusingly. “You’ve gotta kiss my brother!”

Bellamy wiggles his eyebrows at her and teases, “Nice one, Princess.”

“Does that count?” Raven asks, eyes narrowed. “I think that counts. I’m pretty sure they have to kiss twice.”

“What, why?” Bellamy sputters. It’s not that he’s against kissing Clarke twice, more so that he’s been taken off guard.

“The P-word.” Wick confirms with a solemn nod. “That definitely counts as a nickname.”

Bellamy runs back through his words in his head. Oh. Princess. Hm. “Official ruling?” Raven asks the group. “Hands up if it counts.”

Every hand goes up – except for his own and Clarke’s.

Clarke sighs and Bellamy tries not to feel insulted, reminding himself that this isn’t rejection because he’s engineered this situation. She pulls herself onto all fours and crawls across the circle toward him. “Funny seeing you here again, Blake.” She whispers, following it up quickly with, “In for a penny, in for a pound, right?”

Then she plops herself into his lap – none too gently – and brings both hands up to cradle his face. He tells himself it’s just a game, repeatedly, but he just can’t get his own brain (and body) to believe it when Clarke’s looking at him with hooded eyes. The first kiss is soft, just a brush of lips, but then she follows it with her tongue nudging gently at the seam of his lips. When her tongue brushes his, he forgets that there are seven other people watching them, just gets lost in Clarke.

When she pulls back, he’s tempted to say her name – partially because he’s pretty sure he wants to worship Clarke Griffin as a new deity, and partially because he knows it means he’ll have to kiss her again. He’s probably already pushed his luck, though, and instead just tucks a lock of her hair behind her ear and digs his fingers into the ticklish spot under her ribs to get her squirming away from him.

And, well, now he knows what Clarke’s _tongue_ tastes like in addition to her lips.

He’s fucked.

______________________________________________________________

**3.**

The second kiss makes it so much worse. Bellamy has realized that he was able to go eight years without kissing Clarke because he could only imagine how good it would be. Now that he knows for sure, now that he knows the weight of her in his lap, the way her lips slant against his, the way she apparently likes to lick up against the back of his teeth…well now he _can’t stop thinking about it._

It’s painful, actually, that he goes six months without being able to kiss her again.

He’s at Raven’s new condo one night in late October with Clarke, Miller, Wick and Raven, well on his way to drunk off the case of beer Raven bought them in thanks when he suggests Spin the Bottle of all things. “Come on, Blake. What are you, twelve?” Miller snorts. The rest of the group sort of half-heartedly agrees that it’s a ridiculous idea.

It’s only Raven who says. “Actually, that sounds fun. I’ve never played Spin the Bottle.”

“That settles it!” Clarke declares, jumping to her feet to grab one of the empties off of Raven’s formerly pristine granite counter. “No one should live their life without having played Spin the Bottle at least once.”

The way that Raven smirks at Bellamy makes him think that she’s lying. He can’t bring himself to care because after six long months of coexisting with Clarke – accompanying her to gallery events, letting her piggyback on his shoulders at summer concerts in the park so she can see the stage, brushing frosting off her nose as she tries to contribute to his school’s beginning of year bake sale, going apple picking only to end up standing perfectly still against a tree for an hour so that Clarke can sketch him – he’s finally got a chance to kiss her again.

He kisses Wick _three fucking times_ before he gets to kiss Clarke. But it doesn’t matter because he’s pretty sure he’d kiss Wick a hundred times as long as, in the end, he gets to see Clarke’s eyes slip shut as he leans in to press his lips against hers. He’d probably kiss Wick a thousand times for this moment – for Clarke tilting her head the way that he likes because she _knows_ his kiss now.

(They kiss twice more before the game is over. So what if he has to kiss Miller just as many times?)

______________________________________________________________

**4.**

By Christmas, he’s pretty sure that everyone knows what he’s been up to this year. They all look at him a bit skeptically when Octavia breaks out the Mistletoe as they begin to decorate the Blake house.

If it weren’t already painfully obvious, they’ve probably all confirmed now that Bellamy is hopelessly in love with Clarke. It explains the pitying looks he get as they glance between him and the Mistletoe. He’d be embarrassed about it, but he’s already too deep into it. Besides, he knows the deep dark secrets of each and every one of them so he takes solace in the fact that he’s not the only pathetic one around.

He’s working with Clarke to try to artfully drape tinsel over the tree – which essentially means that he throws the stupid silver strands at the tree and Clarke _tsk_ s at him, taking them all back off and then doing it her way. He’s so concentrated on planning how he’s going to use the Mistletoe to be able to kiss Clarke again that he almost yells in shock when _Raven_ of all people pops up behind them dangling the Mistletoe above their heads and yells, “Now, kiss!”

Clarke whirls around, tinsel bits flying with the momentum. “For the sake of Santa Claus.” Raven adds seriously.

Clarke turns her smiling gaze on Bellamy. “We always seem to end up here.” She says and shakes her head.

He shrugs and grins back. “Well, who are we to risk jeopardizing Santa Claus?”

“I’m not prepared to take that risk.” Clarke tells him, brows drawn low in mock seriousness.

Bellamy feels a bit bolder this time. It’s the first time they’ve both been sober since the Kiss Cam and it’s the first time that _he_ hasn’t been the one to have to engineer an excuse to kiss her. He feels entitled, maybe.

So Bellamy winds one arm low around her waist, brings the other up to cradle the back of her neck and then earns himself a squeal of surprise when he dips her low. There are a few whoops from their friends in the room, but it all turns to silence when Bellamy’s lips land on Clarke’s.

He hums contentedly at the taste of eggnog on Clarke’s tongue when he manages to sneak his own past her lips. Bellamy takes the opportunity to _devour_ Clarke with this kiss, milking it for all its worth, before he pulls back. He keeps her dipped low, immobilized and unable to get away from him. She’s still smiling, so he doesn’t think he’s smashed any boundaries here.

When he pulls her back upright, he takes the opportunity to steal one last quick kiss, because he doesn’t just want to know what it’s like to kiss Clarke intensely, like he might lose her at any moment. He wants to be able to remember the kind of kiss he might give her in a rush, maybe on his way out the door in the morning. The kinds of kisses he might take for granted. (He _won’t_ take it for granted, obviously, but if he’s going to pine, he wants to be able to picture it all.)

______________________________________________________________

**5.**

Octavia convinced them all that going to a _fancy party_ for New Year’s would be a great way to celebrate the first New Year’s where all of the group are “adults.” (AKA the first year where they’re all out of school, with real jobs and real lives.)

So Bellamy is weaving through an overly crowded banquet hall, his bowtie feeling too tight around his neck as he schlepps two champagne flutes back to the high top table where he left Clarke. “Black tie affairs are the worst.” He tells her decisively as he sets the second flute down in front of her. “All affairs that require any type of tie are the worst, actually.”

Clarke reaches up to adjust his bowtie before patting his chest fondly. “At least you get to look like James bond for the night.”

Bellamy arches an eyebrow at her. “You think I look like James Bond?”

She closes one eye, tilts her head and sticks her tongue out the corner of her mouth, the way she often does as she considers a blank canvas, he knows. “Hang on, do the thing. You know the-” She mimes adjusting one’s cufflinks and Bellamy complies, fiddling with his own. “Oh yeah, very James Bond.”

“Does that make you my Bond girl for the night?” He asks, smiling bright at the way Clarke flushes.

She looks down at the gown Octavia had all but thrown at her this evening. It’s floor-length and slinky, covered in glitter from top to bottom. Though it’s downright indecent from the back, the neckline is at least high enough in the front that Bellamy won’t get distracted and ignore how beautiful her _face_ looks tonight.

“I’m not sure. Do I qualify as Bond girl-hot in this thing?”

“Absolutely.” Bellamy assures her. “Where did everyone else get off to?”

“Dance floor, I think? Jasper might’ve hit the buffet again.”

“Think we’ll get them back by midnight?” He asks, head nodding toward the sea of couples on the dance floor.

“Probably not, but I’m sure Jasper will be back soon.”

Bellamy nods, then huffs. “Just Sergeant Pepper and his Lonely Hearts Club Band to ring in the New Year?”

Clarke snorts. She, Bellamy and Jasper are the only ones left in the group who haven’t paired off. Octavia and Lincoln have been together for two years now. Wick and Raven finally got together not long after the Kings game in the spring, the night that Bellamy more specifically remembers as the second time that he got to kiss Clarke. It was Monty who finally made a move on Miller on Thanksgiving just last month. (“This year, I’m grateful that Miller’s so oblivious so that I had time to gather my courage tonight.” He’d said before nearly diving across the mashed potatoes to plant a kiss on Miller’s lips.) That relationship was a long time coming as well.

Clarke nods absently, head tilting as she searches the crowd. Finally, she scoffs. “Actually, it looks like Sergeant Pepper might be deserting his Lonely Hearts Club Band.” She points through a gap in the crowd to where Jasper appears to be chatting up a girl they’ve never seen before. Jasper says something to make her laugh and she reaches a hand out to pat his chest, clearly flirting.

Bellamy laughs briefly. “Guess it’s just you and me, Griffin.”

“Ah well, what else is new? They say that the way you bring in the New Year is the way that you’ll spend the New Year, and I think we all already knew that I’d be spending next year with you.” She leans in to bump him with her hip, but doesn’t back up out of his space again, just stays all-but pressed against his side.

“How long do we have any-” Bellamy begins, but is cut off by the crowd beginning to chant a countdown from 10. When he turns, he sees the numbers projected on a big screen above the bar.

Clarke beams up at him briefly, clearly amused by his poor timing, before she joins in the countdown at 6. They chant with the crowd, getting louder and louder until the final 1, joining into the collective “Happy New Year!”

And then suddenly they really do look like the Lonely Hearts Club Band as couples pair off to kiss for the New Year. He and Clarke look around, feeling slightly helpless for a moment, before their eyes land back on each other.

“Happy New Year?” He questions, eyes purposefully dragging to her lips.

“What the hell?” She shrugs before tilting her head up toward his, the heels Octavia wrangled her in making their height difference less of an issue.

This kiss is short and sweet, he can taste a hint of the champagne remaining on her lips and licks at it briefly before pulling back to drop another soft kiss to her forehead and pull her into a hug.

______________________________________________________________

**+1.**

It’s a Tuesday, late in January. Bellamy is sitting at his kitchen table grading the first major essay of the semester. (They’re all atrocious.) So his shoulders are tense and he’s hunched over, red pen clutched so hard in his grip he’s surprised it hasn’t snapped.

Clarke lets herself in through the front door – he can tell it’s her, even before he’s seen her, because he just knows what her footsteps sound like walking through his house. She comes to a halt next to his chair in the kitchen and pulls a particularly terrible essay from his hands. He’d be grateful if she didn’t give him a paper cut in the process.

“Ow! Unnecessary.” He tells her, pouting up at her.

“You are, without a doubt, the stupidest person I’ve ever met. You are stupider than the schmuck who wrote that paper.” She tells him, though she doesn’t exactly sounds angry, more fond than anything.

She reaches down and fists her hand in his shirt, uses it as leverage to pull him up out of the chair and leans in to place a biting kiss on his lips.

His eyes go so wide that it almost hurts.

“What was that for?” He asks, panicking, waiting for someone to jump out of his pantry and tell him he’s being pranked.

“That’s because I’m in love with you, you idiot. Not because of a Kiss Cam, or a stupid drinking game or Mistletoe or New Year’s or any other stupid reason you felt the need to come up with. I’m not going to pretend it’s anything other than what it is. I’m in love with you, Bellamy Blake, and I’ve been waiting for you to ask me out since our goddamn sophomore year of high school and I’m tired of waiting.” She’s panting at the end, probably because it seems like she’s forgotten how to breathe, but also because she blurts it all out in one breath.

Bellamy blinks, throat suddenly dry because _holy shit._ He’s tempted to run back through the last…Jesus, _ten years_ of his life, try to find a moment that might tell him that Clarke’s been in love with him.

“Are you going to do something about it? Or am I totally wrong here. You’re in love with me, too, right?”

He’s still gaping like a fish, his mind apparently turned useless by this confession.

Clarke turns beet red in an instant. “Oh, shit. Maybe I misread this. Fuck. I – just forget that this ever happened. Things can go back to the way they were before. It’s fine. Fuck. I’m just…” She points behind her and starts backing away, hands held up in front of her like Bellamy is some kind of feral animal.

“No!” He yells, voice echoing off the tiled kitchen walls. It’s not exactly the words that he’s trying to get out, but it does make Clarke stop, so that’s good.

“No?” She asks, hope shining in her eyes.

“No, don’t go. No, you didn’t misread the situation.” He shakes his head, regains control over his limbs and approaches her. “Yes, I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you for so long that I don’t remember what it’s like not to love you. Every day I wake up and you’re the first thing that I think of. Every night you’re the last thing on my mind before I fall asleep.”

Clarke flushes again, but this time it’s a good thing. This time she looks flattered, pleased, mostly relieved. He likes this look.

“I had no idea that you felt the same way. I’d resigned myself to a lifetime of chasing you, content to be right behind you instead of by your side because I thought that it would have to be good enough. After that stupid hockey game, the Kiss Cam – it made everything so much worse. It almost physically _hurt_ knowing what it was like to kiss you, knowing that I might never have the opportunity again.”

(He kisses her now because he’s thinking about it and he knows that he can. It’s awkward because they’re both smiling and it’s more like smushing faces than a proper kiss, but it’s in the top seven kisses he’s ever had because it’s with Clarke.)

“I might have engineered a few situations to make it happen again.”

“I didn’t know what you were doing at first. But then I, well, I might’ve put Raven up to the Mistletoe.” She’s blushing again and he can’t get enough of the rosy hue on her pale skin. “And I might have told Jasper to leave us alone on New Year’s.”

“If you knew, why didn’t you say something?” Bellamy pouts, thinking of the months they could have spent kissing _every day_.

Clarke shrugs, eyes drifting to the floor. “I was scared. I thought I was seeing what I wanted to see. I thought maybe I was imagining it.”

Bellamy hums, hooks a finger under her chin and nudges her to look up so that he can lean down and kiss her again. “I love you, Clarke Griffin.”

“I love you, too.” She smiles then before bumping him with her shoulder. “For the record, though, I _did_ say something. Just now. I get all the credit for this.”

“I’ll give you credit for building the Parthenon if you’ll kiss me again.”

She does.


	55. You're A Dork

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Clarke doesn't know how to use her words.

“You got me a trip to Iceland?” Bellamy asks, still blinking down at the carefully scrawled itinerary in his lap - the one that Clarke had to do four times before she mastered the kind of calligraphy Bellamy loves. The kind that she knows he loves because he points it out on every single wedding invitation they’ve ever received. “You got me a trip to Iceland for my birthday?”

Clarke huffs, cheeks warming slightly as one corner of her mouth tilts up involuntarily. “Technically I got _us_ a trip to Iceland for your birthday. Unless you’re planning on taking someone else?”

“No, no of course you’re coming, Princess. This is amazing. The northern lights are on my bucket list, but how did you know?” He trails off, blinking at her like she’s going to personally paint the sky for him when they get there. It’s the kind of look that makes her feel like her heart is going to burst from how full it is.

“Well it just seemed like your niche brand of nerdery. Myths, astronomy, aurora borealis…” She shrugs like it’s no big deal, like she didn’t spend weeks coming up with the perfect idea and then calling all _three_ of his bosses to make sure he could get the time off. Like she didn’t spend the last six weeks picking up extra freelance work so she could pay for the trip with her own hard-earned money instead of dipping into her Griffin trust fund like she knows he’d hate.

She doesn’t want to make it into a thing.

“Come on Clarke, you couldn’t have at least let me go first? How am I supposed to follow that?” Octavia whines from the couch. Clarke knows she’s mostly joking, though, especially since she was one of the people that cleared the trip for Clarke - confirming that she was in no way going to be mad about a whole week without Bellamy questioning her life choices. 

“Oh shut it, O. You have literally given me a pillow with your face on it every year for the last three years.” He chucks one of the pillows in question at her face before turning back to Clarke. “It’s perfect. I love it.” Bellamy carefully replaces the tied bow and sets the itinerary down on the coffee table before coming over to Clarke and dropping a kiss on the top of her head. “ _You’re_ perfect. I love you.”

Clarke flushes, idly wondering if she’ll ever stop blushing around him, given that this is still her reaction to him after over a year of dating. “Yeah, yeah, you’re a dork.” She pats his cheek fondly before sinking back into the big recliner chair.

“You know, Clarke, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say something nice to Bellamy. Does she even love you, big brother? I’m pretty sure she’s never said it, you know.” Octavia muses, fingers stroking her chin for good measure.

“To be fair, most of the time you don’t love me either.” Bellamy says before ruffling her hair. Then he sits down and goes about opening Octavia’s present, not even bothering to feign surprise when he gets another pillow. At least this one doesn’t have Octavia’s face on it. Right now, it’s a black sequin pillow that says ‘Octavia is…’ in loopy script, but when Bellamy runs his hands over it he finds that the sequins flip and create a white pillow that says ‘cooler than you’ in black script.

He laughs and immediately throws this one at her head as well and Clarke tries to laugh along with the scene but she’s…stuck. She and Bellamy have been officially dating for almost two years and — she can’t remember if she’s ever told him that she loves him. Could he really think that she doesn’t?

Bellamy hands out ‘I love you’s like they’re snowflakes in the midst of a blizzard. He tells her that he loves her when he wakes up in the morning. He tells her that he loves her when she hands him a cup of coffee. He tells her that he loves her when he kisses her cheek, seeing her for the first time after a long day of work. He tells her that he loves her when they’re watching TV and Clarke yells at the misleading drug commercials. He tells her that he loves her when she takes her waffles out of the toaster too quickly and they burn her hand. 

If she stays here in this chair trying to catalogue each of the individual times that Bellamy has told her that he loves her, she might never get up again because there are too many. But she…can’t think of a single time that she’s said it back. And that gives her a whole new kind of feeling, like fifty elephants sitting on her chest all at once.

That night, Clarke corners Bellamy while he’s brushing his teeth. It’s been bothering her all day and she needs to do something about it. Catching him at a time when he can’t really talk back seems like a good plan. That is, until she freezes up and mostly just winds up glaring at him while his mouth fills up with foam.

He just quirks an eyebrow while she glares, eyes sparking with silent laughter. And - Clarke loves him. She loves him. Really loves him. She knows she does. There’s no other word for the way she feels when she looks at him. But when she opens her mouth to tell him, all that seems to come out is “you look ridiculous.”

Bellamy just snorts a laugh before rinsing out his mouth and closing the distance between them. “And you kind of look like you want to punch me. Let’s fix that, yeah?” He grins before dropping his mouth to hers, kissing her slowly until all of the tension bleeds from her body and she leans into him a bit. “There. That’s much better, right?”

Clarke sighs but it quickly morphs into a frustrated growl. “No. I love you, you idiot!” She’s simultaneously so pleased with herself for getting the words out and mortified that, the first time she says them to Bellamy, she yells them at his face. Not exactly the picture of romance.

Bellamy takes advantage of the hand that’s still curled around Clarke’s neck to stroke his thumb along the length of her jaw, completely unfazed by the way she went about this confession. “Okay, and that means you’re mad at me?”

Clarke gapes at him open-mouthed for a second before shaking her head. “No. I’m mad at myself.”

“Because you love me?”

“No.” It takes another minute before she finds the right words, but Bellamy spends the long moment of silence calmly running his hands over her shoulders and arms. “Because you’ve never known and I’ve never told you and I’m sorry that we’ve been doing this for so long and I never realized that it might hurt you but I never really thought about it today until Octavia said it and you always tell me that you love me and…I’m just sorry.”

Bellamy takes a second to brush Clarke’s hair back off of her face, run his fingers over the crease that’s appeared in her brow. “Clarke, I know you love me. You’ve never needed to say the words for me to understand how you feel.”

“Really?” Clarke blinks up at him, fighting back frustrated tears.

Bellamy wraps his arms around her waist and hoists her up onto the bathroom counter so that they can be eye to eye. “Every time you pack me soup for work when I’m not feeling well, I know it’s because you love me. And every time you bring me my glasses when I’m reading so I don’t strain my eyes. And when you pretend to order that pumpkin drink that I love so much and let me order your black coffee instead so that the baristas don’t judge me. Every drawing you’ve ever given me. Every time you sneak behind my back to ask Octavia about what our grandmother used to cook us for special dinners. Clarke you do so many things every day that show me how you feel about me. I don’t need the words.”

“Oh.” Clarke’s hands drop his waist and bunch in the loose fabric of his t-shirt. “But don’t you want them?”

“I want _you._ And you come from a family where words don’t mean a whole lot. So you show me. I get it, Clarke. And I love you for it.” Bellamy presses their foreheads together so they’re just breathing the same air, nuzzles his nose against her just to enjoy the contact.

Clarke sniffles a bit, but she feels lighter than she has since this morning. Maybe lighter than she has in a long time. “You’re a dork.”

“And that.” Bellamy pulls back, eyes fiercely burning into hers. “That one most of all. Every time you tell me I’m a dork, I know what you really mean is ‘I love you and you’re perfect and I can’t get enough of you.’”

It’s a little bit of a self-service and it’s clear that Bellamy’s ego really doesn’t need the extra boost, but Clarke can’t help but to press her lips against his and murmur “you’re a dork’ over and over again between kisses.


	56. Weird Talents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Murphy is the last to know.

”No chance. You’re lying.” Clarke declares, confidence written on every inch of her face as she picks up the near-empty bottle of Jack from the floor and slams it onto the table like a challenge.

“Oh really, princess?” Bellamy smirks, raising one eyebrow in her direction. “I hope you’re ready to drink.”

“Prove it, Blake.” She rises to her feet and makes a big show of tucking both her phone and, much to his chagrin, Miller’s wallet into her pants pockets.

Bellamy shrugs and pushes out of the leather armchair so that he can stand in front of her. “I’d just like the record to show that I should get double points for this, because it’s way more impressive to steal from someone who knows what you’re trying to do.”

Clarke rolls her eyes. “Oh my god, you can’t call double points before — “

Bellamy cuts her off, ducking down to press his lips to hers. He let’s one hand curl around her neck while the other slides down to her hips, takes advantage of her open mouth to slide his tongue against hers, slow and smooth. For a half of a second, he almost distracts _himself_ from getting the job done, but his brain reboots and he quickly gets to work.

He’s just finally letting himself sink into the kiss, teeth scraping along Clarke’s jaw when she pulls up for air, when he gets hit in the head with a pillow. “I’m calling it. Time’s up, big brother. I’m not about to let you get Clarke naked in our living room just to prove a point.”

Both he and Clarke regain their composure easily. Once she’s a half a step away, Clarke pats her pockets and triumphantly pulls out both her phone and Miller’s wallet. “Ha! Time to put the bottle where your mouth is.”

“Wow, you know, for once you’re right.” Bellamy picks up the bottle and hands it to her - along with her watch, the chain she wears with her dad’s wedding ring on it and the hair clip that she perpetually keeps on one of her belt loops.

Clarke blinks at him a few times before her hands move in a blur checking her neck, her pants and her wrist to make sure that the items he’s holding out for her are actually _hers_. “Holy shit.”

“Okay, even I’ll admit that that one was impressive and I didn’t even doubt you, Bellamy.” Raven tilts her glass at him in recognition from the couch. “Even I didn’t see you get her watch.”

“What can I say?” Bellamy grins, watching Clarke angrily do her shots straight from the bottle.

“Here’s what _I_ can say.” Murphy pipes up from his spot on the floor. “I’m putting an official embargo on Weird Talents until these two idiots get their heads out of their asses. It was amusing to see how they could turn every challenge into an excuse to angrily make out at first, but it got old after a few months. Besides, Octavia is going to be scarred for life if we don’t put a stop to it. Once they realize they can hook up when there isn’t a drinking game involved, then we’ll be back in safe territory.”

Clarke sets the now-empty bottle on the table and tilts her head at Murphy. “What do you mean?”

“You know. You two.” He helpfully waves his hand between her and Bellamy. “Once you actually get together, I’m assuming this won’t be an issue anymore. By my calculations - and we _are_ counting this as a weird talent, people — we’ve got about three months left before Bellamy finally breaks and asks her out.”

There’s a brief moment of silence before Bellamy tosses a beer at Murphy’s chest. “Drink.”

Murphy looks about as confused as he might if the beer he caught were actually an eel. “What?”

“Drink. I’m calling you on your talent.” When Murphy doesn’t crack open the can he adds, “We started dating like two months ago.”

“What?” He repeats.

He catches another beer, this time thrown by Clarke. It’s a good thing he’s got decent reflexes. “Make it two, because I actually asked _him_ out.”

“What? Bullshit. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Bellamy snorts. “What did you want us to do? Send a post-coital selfie in a group text or something?”

“Maybe!” Murphy huffs, but does actually open his first beer. He downs it in one go and sets the empty can down before looking at the rest of the group. “You mean they’re going to be this annoying forever?”

Clarke winks at him. “Afraid so.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because sometimes we need a Bellarke who don't go gooey for each other just because they're in a relationship.


	57. Love is Love is Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke gets into graffiti and Bellamy gets into Clarke.

Clarke didn’t exactly set out to become a street artist. She just - she’s not really allowed to be vocal about her political opinions because they’re a little different (read: polar opposite) from her mother’s clients’ and Abby Griffin’s daughter speaking out against her campaign strategies would be slightly catastrophic. Which, honestly, would be more than fine with Clarke. It’s just that her dad’s literal dying wish was that she and her mother would get closer again and outwardly sabotaging her mother’s career would ever so slightly go against that wish.

So Clarke paints. A little drunk. At 3 am. On a freeway overpass. An angry little girl with clenched fists screaming a rainbow.

When she walks to work the next morning she’s still in shock to see the piece, half-convinced it was a drunk dream instead of a reality. But it’s there and she sees it and it’s real. She gives it the same awe-struck look every morning for two weeks. 

It’s around that point that she notices the response. Arguably, it’s equally as clumsy as Clarke’s original work. A set of wings are emerging from her angry girl. They catch Clarke’s eye mostly because they look…weird. From a distance they seem almost spider-webbed. She snatches her camera from her bag and zooms in close enough to find that angry girl’s wings are created by the same words written over and over and over again. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of times.

**Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love…**

They’re swooping, crossing over each other, layered like they’re _supposed_ to be unrecognizable from the distance. The letters are bleeding on the edges like they were painted from a stencil as opposed to her freehand work. Clarke is surprised to find that she’s not angry at the change in her work. If pressed, she might even say that she doesn’t hate the addition.

It’s another week before she sees the image circulating online. It’s nowhere major - not like it’s covered on the front page of the Times or something. But it’s out there in the blogosphere. Infiltrating Clarke’s little internet bubble to the point where she sees it three or four times in the span of just a few days. The internet doesn’t seem to mind that it’s a bit derivative. Half of them don’t even seem to notice that it’s two artists’ work haphazardly thrown together.

It’s not like Clarke is after the internet fame, but once her work is out there with someone else’s stamp on it, she sort of wants to make a name (albeit an anonymous one) for herself. Independently.

So she does it again. And again. And again. Until it becomes just like any other regular weekly activity. She gets smarter and tries the stencil thing that her mystery contributor did. It makes the painting go much faster, so she’s less worried about getting caught or arrested. She tries to spread her work out around the city, on different types of canvases so that she doesn’t wind up with police camping out where they suspect she might go next.

Her contributor seems to follow her, though. They’re consistent, at least. On one of her works they create a pedestal out of the phrase “Will you be a cynic or will you be a builder?” Somehow a flowering tree out of “so it goes” and on yet another, a frame made out of Nietzsche quotes. It goes on and on - somehow he (and he feels enough like a he to Clarke that she’s going with it until she’s proven otherwise) finds every single one of her pieces and builds on the picture with words. Quotes. Some that she knows, but more that she finds herself having to google at the end of the day.

And then there’s the piece that Clarke has come to think of as **The Wall**. It’s Clarke’s favorite piece that she’s done thus far. A woman holding a lightbulb up to her mouth. It feels like a different thing to Clarke each day, but most of the time she thinks the woman is singing. It seems like her contributor agrees on all fronts. Two days after Clarke puts it up he builds her a…well Clarke thinks it’s a stage, but the way he’s built it out of sharp edges and jagged lines, a few places lightened up with silver (which shocked her because he’s never used anything but black before) it seems like it’s made of broken glass. Maybe broken light bulbs. Each carved from an iteration of “have mercy.”

The day she sees it she knows that she has to meet him. 

As she spends days wondering how she can find him, **The Wall** grows. At first it’s clearly his hand. Her singer gets an audience, crafted from what Clarke later learns are all quotes from the Communist Manifesto, that appears over a series of three days because it’s so massive. Then a Frederick William Robertson quote shows up about ten feet down the wide open expanse of the brick wall.

Clarke watches **The Wall** for weeks. After her contributor’s initial additions, other pieces - from other artists - start popping up. There are some who imitate her contributor’s style, other who add to what Clarke has officially decided is a band, and some who just add quick streaks of colors or peace signs.

After another two months, it actually _does_ wind up in the Times. It’s not quite the front page, but it _does_ make the front of the Arts section. The day after they shoot the pictures, Clarke goes back to add to it for the first time herself.

She turns the light bulb on.

When she caps her spray paint, she can’t help but stare for a minute. It’s the only time she’s ever lingered at the so-called “scene of the crime.” Apparently it was one time too many.

A deep voice, oddly familiar, cuts into her moment. “It feels finished now, doesn’t it?”

Clarke would like to pretend she doesn’t jump, but she’d be lying. She turns and holds her spray can up like it’s mace instead of just paint, but she figures that it’d probably still do some pretty solid damage to this guy’s eyes.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean too scare you.” The guy says, but he looks more sheepish than intimidating, eyes lowering under unfairly long lashes and teeth peeking out in a hint of a smile. He holds up his own can of silvery spray paint. “I don’t usually mess with the art side, but - well, it seemed like she deserved it.”

“Oh.” Clarke says, blinking at him once, twice, three times. “Oh.” She says again because her brain still hasn’t quite caught up. “You’re him. You did this?”

He shrugs. “My sister said that after the second or third time I should’ve just started writing my phone number. I felt like you’d never call because you’d be mad at me for ruining it.”

“You tagged my gay pride mural.” He just quirks an eyebrow at her. “Why would you think, I mean, why would she think you should even try to give me your number?”

It’s not any lighter when he steps forward, but he’s close enough that she can make out more of his features. She knows him. She knows that she does. She just can’t quite put her finger on from where. “That sister of mine - does the name Octavia Blake ring a bell?”

And that’d be where. “Octavia Blake from my Tuesday/Thursday art class, Octavia Blake?”

He nods. _Bellamy_ nods, she thinks, at least according to what she recalls listed under “legal guardian” on Octavia’s class forms. “Well, for the sake of the world I sure hope there’s not more than one of her.”

Clarke has to laugh at that. “How’d you know it was me?”

That makes him look at her sideways. “I’ve seen your art all over the studio. Were you trying to hide it?”

And, well, no. She wasn’t. But of the dozens of people who are actually a regular part of her life, not a single one has ever mentioned making the connection between Clarke and the art popping up around the city. And yet _Bellamy Blake_ does?

She shakes her head, more out of wonder than in response to him.

“Look, Octavia would tell me that it’s creepy enough that I’ve been trying, and apparently failing, to flirt with you via graffiti for the last few months. Let’s just not tell her about this, yeah? How about you let me take you out to dinner instead so that we can have a real conversation? And maybe I can pretend like I’m actually good at socializing.”

What the hell. “I guess it’s the least I can do, seeing as how you did get me in the Times. How do you feel about coffee? There’s a decent 24-hour place three blocks over.”

Eight months later he proposes in the same spot. He tells Clarke that he thought about adding a ring to her singer, but the wall hasn’t been touched since the night they officially met and he likes that it stays that way. A frozen moment in time that they can always revisit.


	58. Clean-Up on Aisle 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Octavia’s been saying for a while now ‘you know, if you asked Bellamy to marry you next week, he’d just ask you what he should wear.’"

”Will you be my husband?”

Bellamy does a half jump and almost drops the can of tomato sauce he was considering. It’s not quite how he imagined a proposal might go. Bellamy imagined maybe a quiet night in with a nice dinner. A ring that he had relatively no say in picking out, seeing as how he’s sort of hopeless with fashionable things. He’s never really imagined being down on one knee because he doesn’t like the idea of supplicating for something that should involve reciprocity. He’s not exactly attached to his idea of a proposal but…

 _Clarke_ is proposing to him. (He’s never thought about that before.) It’s early in the evening on a Tuesday. He’s wearing jeans and a shirt that says “Read, you dumb f*ck” and Clarke is wearing the same leggings and t-shirt she’s been wearing for the last three days. They’re also in the grocery store. Oh, right, and they’re not even dating. There was this one night two years ago, where they both got a little wine drunk and hooked up at Miller’s graduation party, but they’ve never even talked about it since. So…they haven’t even been on a single date.

It’s just that, see, Bellamy’s been pretty much head over heels in love with Clarke for going on _five_ years now. And they’ve been living together for a while already so, do they really need to think about things as trivial as dates? In the grand scheme of things, does that really matter?

So he blinks at Clarke a couple of times, puts the jar of sauce back on the shelf (although he’ll probably never be able to look at Classico the same again) and in the most eloquent way possible says, “Yeah, I mean, um yes, yeah, of course, yes.”

And then he does what any newly engaged person should do and puts the basket of groceries down so that he can take Clarke’s face in both hands and kiss her. The fact that it’s actually the first time that he’s ever kissed her is just something he’s putting out of his mind. This is fine. This is great.

When he pulls back, he knows he’s grinning and his eyes have gone soft. Clarke glances for a second before side-stepping him and clapping him on the back. “Nicely done, Blake! She just walked away. Smoothly avoided.”

Bellamy tilts his head. “What?”

This is not great.

“Lexa. God you know, we just, we haven’t talked since the break up and I heard through a friend of a friend that she just got engaged and she just looked so smug I couldn’t let her come up and be all engaged while I would be all ‘yeah, well, here I am, still super single.’ That was quick thinking. I definitely owe you one.” She ruffles his hair and then picks up the abandoned basket before sauntering down the aisle. (But not the aisle Bellamy had in mind.)

Three days later they’re eating popcorn on the couch and watching reruns on the DIY Network when Clarke says, “So I was thinking about the grocery store the other day. You know, seeing Lexa and your save and all. And did you think that I was asking you for something else?”

“What? No, of course not.” Bellamy says just a little too quickly. His nonchalant hand wave sends a piece of popcorn flying under the coffee table.

“So you didn’t think that I was proposing to you in aisle 7? And you didn’t think you were actually agreeing to marry me?”

He has to swallow twice before he feels confident that he can actually form words. “No, absolutely not. That’d be crazy.”

Clarke narrows her eyes at him and forges on. “Because, you know, if you _were_ thinking that, I’m not going to say that I’d be opposed to the idea but I think it’d probably be a good idea if we at least went on a couple of dates first.”

Bellamy nods slowly, brain trying to catch up with what he thinks Clarke is saying. “Yeah, that would probably be the way to do it.” He turns his attention back to the first-time flippers who are massacring their kitchen in the worst way possible, trying to at least pretend like he’s not mostly dying on the inside.

He can feel Clarke staring at the side of his head for long minutes until she finally says, “Bellamy?” He turns then and she’s grinning at him, lips curled in to hold in a laugh. “I didn’t see Lexa at the grocery store. Octavia’s been saying for a while now ‘you know, if you asked Bellamy to marry you next week, he’d just ask you what he should wear.’ But I thought she was crazy. Is she crazy?”

“Yes.” It’s a knee jerk reaction that he immediately regrets when he sees Clarke’s face fall. “She wouldn't be Octavia if she weren’t crazy. But she’s not wrong. About me.”

“Hey Bell?” Clarke licks her lips, picks up the popcorn bowl to put it on the coffee table. “Do you want to maybe at least go on a couple of dates before we decide what you’re going to wear?”

His growled ‘fuck, yeah’ is muffled by Clarke’s lips as he half-tackles her down onto the couch.

Later, when they tell Octavia what happened, she just sighs and tells them they’re both idiots. (But also that she's happy for them.)


End file.
